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AMOS  JUDD.     By  J.  A.  Mitchell,  Editor  of  "Life" 
IA.    A  Love  Story.    By  Q.    [Arthur  T.  Quiller-Couch] 
THE   SUICIDE   CLUB.     By  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
IRRALIE'S   BUSHRANGER.     By  E.  W.  Hornung 
A   MASTER   SPIRIT.     By  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford 
MADAME   DELPHINE.     By  George  W.  Cable 
ONE   OF  THE  VISCONTI.     By  Eva  Wilder  Brodhead 
A   BOOK   OF   MARTYRS.     By  Cornelia  Atwood  Pratt 
A   BRIDE   FROM   THE   BUSH.     By  E.  W.  Hornung 
THE    MAN   WHO   WINS.     By  Robert  Herrick 
AN   INHERITANCE.     By  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford 

THE  OLD   GENTLEMAN  OF  THE   BLACK   STOCK. 
By  Thomas  Nelson  Page 

LITERARY  LOVE  LETTERS  AND  OTHER   STORIES. 
By  Robert  Herrick 

A   ROMANCE   IN   TRANSIT.     By  Francis  Lyr.de 
IN   OLD    NARRAGANSETT. 
By  Alice  Morse  Earle. 

SEVEN   MONTHS  A   PRISONER. 
By  J.  V.  Had  ley. 

Other  Volumes  to  be  announced 


IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 


IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 


ROMANCES  AND  REALITIES 


BY 
ALICE  MORSE  EARLE 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK,   1898 


Copyright,  1898,  by 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


PS 


FOREWORD 

Some  of  these  stories  of  old  Narragansett 
are  familiar  fireside  tales  to  those  who  have 
lived  in  that  picturesque  land ;  some  are  but 
vague  traditions,  others  summer  dreams ;  a 
few  are  family  chronicles;  still  others  are  out- 
lined in  that  interesting  memoir,  Thomas  R. 
Hazard's  "Recollections  of  the  Olden  Times," 
or  in  Updike's  "  Narragansett  Church"  Old 
Narragansett  was,  properly,  all  the  lands 
occupied  by  the  Narragansett  Indians  at  the 
coming  of  the  English.  Narragansett  is  now, 
popularly,  the  coast  sweep  of  the  western  shore 
of  Narragansett  Bay  from  Wickford  to  Point 
Judith.  In  1685  Narragansett  was  made  a 
separate  government  apart  from  Rhode  Island, 
and  was  called  the  Kings  Province.  When 
reunited  with  Rhode  Island  this  was  changed 
to  King's  County.  For  many  years,  and  by 
some  old  people  to-day,  it  is  called  the  South 


1711S73 


vi  FOREWORD 

County,  but  its  legal  name  is  Washington 
County,  which  was  given  it  in  ij8i ;  Wash- 
ington being  a  more  agreeable  and  tolerable 
name  at  that  date  to  loyal  Americans  than 
King's.  Narragansett  was  owned  by  a  com- 
paratively small  number  of  persons,  and  estates 
were  large,  one  family  owned  a  tract  nine 
miles  long  and  three  wide.  Thomas  Stanton 
had  a  "  lordship  "  four  and  a  half  miles  long 
and  two  wide.  Colonel  Champlin  owned  two 
thousand  acres,  Thomas  Hazard  twelve  thou- 
sand acres.  Farms  of  Jive,  six,  even  ten  miles 
square  existed. 

Thus  the  conditions  of  life  in  colonial  Nar- 
ragansett were  widely  different  from  those  of 
other  New  England  colonies.  The  establish- 
ment of  and  adherence  to  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and  the  universal  prevaletice  of  African 
slavery,  evolved  a  social  life  resembling  that 
of  the  Virginian  plantation  rather  than  of  the 
Puritan  farm.  It  was  a  community  of  many 
superstitions,  to  which  the  folk -customs  of 
the  feast-days  of  the  English  Church,  the 
evil  communications  of  witch-seeking  Puritan 
neighbors,  the  voodooism  of  the  negro  slaves, 
the  pow  wows  of  the  native  red  men,  all  added 


FOREWORD  vii 

a  share  and  infinite  variety.  It  was  a  planta- 
tion of  wealth,  of  vast  flocks  and  herds,  of 
productive  soil,  of  great  crops,  of  generous 
living;  all  these  are  vanished  from  the  life 
there  to-day,  but  still  the  fields  are  smiling 
and  the  lakes  and  the  bay  are  blue  and 
beautiful  as  of  yore  ;  and  a  second  prosperity 
is  dawning  in  the  old  Kings  Province  in 
the  universal  establishment  therein  of  happy 
summer-homes. 

In  memory  of  many  perfect  days  spent  on 
Narragansett  roads  and  lanes,  of  days  in 
Narragansett  woods  or  on  the  shore,  these 
pages  have  been  written. 

ALICE  MORSE  EARLE. 

WICKFORD,  RHODE  ISLAND, 
Midsummer  Eve,  1897. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


A  Narragansett  Elopement  ....      / 

Narragansett  Weavers 23 

Where  Three  Towns  Meet    ....    57 
Tuggie  Bannocks's  Moonack     .    .    .    63 

A  Black  Politician 77 

The  Witch  Sheep 103 

The  Crusoes  of  the  Noon-House   .    .121 

The  Doctor's  Pie-Plates 7^9 

My  Delft  Apothecary  Jars    .    .    .    .757 

The  Dancing  Turkey 169 

Cuddymonk's  Ghost 181 


A  NARRAGANSETT  ELOPEMENT 


A  NARRAGANSETT  ELOPEMENT 

FOUR  miles  north  of  Narragansett  Pier  lies 
the  old  South  Ferry,  from  whence  for  over 
a  century  ran  ferry-boats  to  a  landing  on 
Conanicut  Island.  About  a  mile  farther 
north  there  stands  on  Boston  Neck  an  an- 
cient willow-shaded,  gambr  el -roofed,  weath- 
er-beaten house  which  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century  was  the  scene  of  a 
sadly  romantic  event.  It  was  built  by 
Rowland  Robinson  in  the  first  half  of  the 
century — in  1746 — and  was  originally  one 
hundred  and  ten  feet  long,  as  the  stone 
foundations  still  show.  The  kitchen  and 
negro  quarters  have  been  demolished,  and 
the  present  structure  has  a  front  of  sixty  feet. 
The  rooms  within  are  models  of  the  simple 
style  of  architecture  of  that  day.  The 
staircase  is  specially  beautiful  with  its  grace- 
fully turned  balusters  and  curious  drop 
ornaments,  and  its  deep-worn  steps  of  bass- 
wood.  The  walls  of  all  the  rooms  are  wain- 
3 


4  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

scoted  in  a  substantial  manner,  and  the  fire- 
places are  ornamented  with  blue  and  white 
Dutch  tiles.  The  heavy  timbers  and  rafters 
— all  cut  on  the  place — have  not  sagged  an 
inch  with  the  weight  of  years.  Over  the 
fireplace  in  the  dining-room  is  a  panel  bear- 
ing a  smoke-darkened  painting  which  repre- 
sents a  deer-hunt  that  occurred  on  the 
Robinson  place  while  the  house  was  being 
built.  The  riders  in  this  picture  appear  to 
be  standing  in  their  stirrups  instead  of  sitting 
on  their  saddles.  The  great  attic  in  which 
the  slaves  are  said  to  have  slept  contains  now 
a  picturesque  litter  of  old  sea-chests,  spin- 
ning-wheels, clock -reels,  wool -cards,  flax- 
brakes,  yarn-winders,  saddles,  and  pillions ; 
and  in  the  beams  of  the  roof  are  great  iron 
hooks  to  which — it  is  whispered — the  slaves 
of  olden  times  were  tied  when  they  received 
their  floggings.  They  are  with  much  more 
probability  the  loom-hooks  which  were  used 
by  weavers  when  weaving  cloth  on  an  old 
hand-loom.  The  handsome  great  west  room 
is  known  as  the  Lafayette  Chamber,  it  hav- 
ing been  occupied  for  some  weeks  by  the 
Marquis  de  Lafayette  during  the  Revolution- 
ary War  ;  and  on  panes  of  glass,  still  whole 
after  a  century's  use,  are  the  names  of  French 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT  5 

officers,  scratched  on  with  the  writers'  dia- 
mond rings. 

The  house  abounds  in  cupboards  —  tall, 
narrow  cupboards  high  up  over  the  chimney, 
low,  broad  cupboards  under  the  window- 
seats,  medicine  cupboards  and  pot  cupboards, 
triangular  corner  cupboards,  and,  in  the  par- 
lor, one  beautifully  proportioned  apse-shaped 
china-cupboard  which  is  ornamented  with 
carved  "sunbursts"  and  scalloped  and 
serrated  shelves,  and  is  closed  with  glass 
doors  to  show  the  treasures  and  beauties 
within.  But  in  "Unfortunate  Hannah's" 
chamber  is  the  most  famous  cupboard  of 
all,  for  in  that  narrow  and  shallow  retreat  a 
beautiful  daughter  of  Rowland  Robinson  hid 
her  lover  when  she  heard  the  approaching 
footsteps  of  her  irascible  father  on  the  stair- 
case leading  to  her  room. 

Rowland  Robinson  was  a  typical  Narra- 
gansett  planter — wealthy,  proud,  and  im- 
perious. Tall  and  portly,  ruddy  of  face, 
he  showed  in  his  dress  and  carriage  his 
great  wealth  and  high  position.  A  coat  of 
fine  dark  cloth  or  velvet  with  silver  buttons 
was  worn  over  a  long  yellow  waistcoat  with 
great  pockets  and  flaps ;  violet  or  brown 
velvet  knee-breeches  with  handsome  top- 


6  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

boots,  or  silk  stockings  with  buckled  shoes ; 
lace-frilled  shirts ;  a  great  beaver  cocked 
hat  looped  up  with  cords  over  his  powdered 
hair — this  attire  gave  him  a  comely  and 
elegant  presence.  His  character  may  be 
given  in  a  few  words  by  quoting  the  wife 
of  Hon.  William  Hunter,  minister  to  Brazil. 
She  wrote  in  her  diary  sixty  years  ago 
her  personal  recollection  of  him.  "  He 
was  of  violent  passions,  which  was  charac- 
teristic of  the  Robinsons,  but  of  benevolent, 
noble  nature."  Many  stories  are  told  of 
his  impetuous  generosity  and  kindly  im- 
pulsiveness, none  being  more  characteristic 
than  his  action  when  his  first  cargo  of 
slaves  came  from  the  Guinea  coast.  Slave- 
dealing  was  such  a  universal  practice  at  that 
date  among  wealthy  residents  of  Narragan- 
sett  and  Newport  that  it  was  a  commonplace 
business  enterprise  for  Rowland  Robinson, 
when  he  was  building  his  new  house,  to  send 
a  ship  to  Africa  for  a  cargo  of  negroes,  in- 
tending to  keep  the  most  promising  ones  for 
his  own  household  and  farm  servants,  and  to 
sell  the  remainder.  But  when  the  ship  land- 
ed at  South  Ferry,  and  the  forlorn,  wretched, 
feeble  men  and  women  disembarked,  he 
burst  into  tears  and  vowed  that  not  one 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT  7 

should  be  sold.  He  kept  them  all  in  his 
own  household,  where  they  were  always 
kindly  treated.  He  never  again  sent  a  ves- 
sel to  Africa  to  engage  in  the  slave-trade, 
though  one  negro  of  royal  birth — Queen 
Abigail — was  so  happy  in  her  Narragansett 
home,  that  with  Rowland  Robinson's  con- 
sent and  his  liberal  assistance  she  returned 
to  her  home  in  Africa,  found  her  son — the 
negro  prince — and  brought  him  to  America, 
where  he  became  Mr.  Robinson's  faithful 
body-servant. 

The  wealthy  planter  had  other  sources  of 
income  than  slave-trading.  He  owned  great 
ships  that  engaged  in  general  commerce.  He 
had  an  immense  dairy  and  made  fine  Rhode 
Island  cheese  from  the  milk  of  his  beautiful 
"blanket-cows."  It  was  his  ambition  to 
have  one  hundred  of  these  lovely  black-and- 
white  animals,  but  it  is  a  matter  of  tradition 
that,  while  he  could  keep  ninety-cine  readily 
enough,  when  he  bought  or  raised  the  hun- 
dredth cow,  one  of  the  ninety-nine  sickened 
and  died,  or  was  lost  through  accident,  and 
thus  the  number  still  fell  short.  Great 
quantities  of  grain  and  hay  did  he  also  raise 
on  his  fertile  farm ;  and  besides  the  grain 
and  cheese  that  he  shipped  to  the  West  In- 


8  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

dies  he  also  sold  to  the  wealthy  colonists 
many  Narragansett  pacers — swift  horses  of 
the  first  distinctively  American  breed.  These 
pacers  all  came  from  one  sire,  "  Old  Snip," 
who  it  is  said  was  of  Andalusian  birth  and 
was  found  swimming  in  the  ocean  off  the 
coast  of  Africa,  was  hauled  on  board  a  trad- 
ing-ship and  was  carried  to  Narragansett, 
where  he  was  allowed  to  run  wild  on  the 
Point  Judith  tract.  These  sure-footed  pac- 
ers had  a  peculiar  gait ;  they  did  not  sway 
their  rider  from  side  to  side,  nor  jolt  him 
up  and  down,  but  permitted  him  to  sit 
quietly,  and  thus  endure  without  fatigue  a 
long  journey.  In  those  carriageless  days, 
when  nearly  all  travel  was  by  saddle  and 
pillion,  the  broad-backed,  easy-going  Narra- 
gansett pacers  were  in  such  demand  that 
they  brought  high  prices  and  proved  a  good 
source  of  income. 

Three  chHdren  were  born  to  the  builder 
of  this  beautiful  colonial  home  :  William 
Robinson,  who  died  in  Newport  in  1804,  in 
a  house  on  the  corner  of  Broadway  and 
Mann  Avenue,  and  two  daughters,  Mary 
and  Hannah.  Gay  festivities  had  .these 
young  people  in  the  hospitable  great  house, 
especially  when  a  demure  young  Quaker 


A   NARRAGANSETT  ELOPEMENT  9 

cousin  was  sent  to  them  to  live  for  awhile 
in  order  to  break  up  a  romantic  love-affair 
of  hers  with  a  young  French  officer.  Count 
Rochambeau  was  a  guest  at  her  father's 
house,  and  too  many  opportunities  for  love- 
making  were  found  when  the  young  French- 
man came  to  report  to  his  commanding 
officer. 

Gayest  and  loveliest  of  all  the  beauties 
throughout  Narragansett  was  fair  Hannah 
Robinson — Unfortunate  Hannah.  Much  tes- 
timony of  her  extraordinary  beauty  has  de- 
scended to  us,  one  story  being  of  her  meet- 
ing with  Crazy  Harry  Babcock,  that  reckless 
dare-devil  of  a  soldier  whose  feats  of  valor 
by  land  and  sea  were  known  all  over  Europe 
as  well  as  in  America.  This  extraordinary 
man,  during  a  visit  to  England,  was  invited 
to  the  palace  and  introduced  to  the  royal 
family.  When  the  queen  extended  her 
hand  to  him  to  be  kissed,  he  sprang  briskly 
from  his  knees,  exclaiming :  "  May  it  please 
your  majesty,  in  my  country,  when  we 
salute  a  beautiful  woman  we  kiss  her  lips, 
not  her  hand,"  and  with  the  words  he 
seized  the  astonished  queen  by  the  shoul- 
ders and  impressed  on  her  lips  a  rousing 
smack.  Upon  his  return  to  America  he 


io  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

went  to  Narragansett  for  the  avowed  pur- 
pose of  ' '  seeing  the  prettiest  woman  in 
Rhode  Island."  As  he  entered  the  parlor 
of  Rowland  Robinson's  house  fair  Hannah 
rose  to  meet  him,  and  the  crazy  colonel,  as 
she  extended  her  hand  to  greet  him,  dropped 
on  his  knee  with  a  look  of  intense  admira- 
tion, saying,  in  the  stilted  words  of  the 
times:  "Pray  permit  one  who  has  kissed 
unrebuked  the  lips  of  the  proudest  queen  on 
earth  to  press  for  a  moment  the  hand  of  an 
angel  from  heaven  ! ' ' 

The  great  wealth  and  luxurious  manner  of 
living  of  the  opulent  Narragansett  planters  was 
shown  in  no  way  more  plainly  than  in  the 
manner  in  which  they  educated  their  chil- 
dren. They  spared  no  pains  nor  expense  to 
obtain  the  best  masters  and  teachers.  Row- 
land Robinson  sent  his  daughter  to  Newport 
to  receive  instruction  from  Madame  Osborne, 
whose  fame  as  a  teacher  was  known  through- 
out America,  and  whose  "Memoirs"  form 
the  dullest  book  in  the  English  language.  At 
this  school  Hannah  met  the  handsome  lover 
who  was  to  have  such  an  influence  over  her 
life.  Pierre  Simond,  or  Peter  Simons  as  was 
most  unromantically  Anglicized  his  name 
was  a  scion  of  a  French  Huguenot  family, 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT         n 

who  taught  music  and  French  in  Madame 
Osborne's  school.  From  the  moment  the 
young  couple  met  they  were  lovers.  Both 
knew,  however,  how  hopeless  it  was  to  think 
of  obtaining  Mr.  Robinson's  consent  to  a 
marriage  which  would  appear  to  him  so 
unequal ;  they  therefore  kept  their  love  a 
secret. 

As  the  time  approached  for  Hannah's  re- 
turn to  her  home  in  Narragansett,  the  lovers 
were  in  despair  at  the  thought  of  separation, 
for  they  knew  their  unhappiness  could  not 
be  mitigated  even  by  the  exchange  of  love- 
letters.  At  this  juncture  the  young  music- 
teacher  managed  to  obtain  a  position  as  pri- 
vate tutor  in  the  family  of  Colonel  Gardiner, 
who  lived  only  two  miles  from  Hannah's 
home  and  who  was  her  uncle. 

It  can  easily  be  divined  that  when  once  in 
Narragansett  the  happy  lovers  found  many 
opportunities  of  meeting,  which  were  fre- 
quently brought  about  by  the  romantic  and 
easy-going  colonel,  and  were  not  hindered 
by  Hannah's  mother  when  she  discovered 
her  daughter's  love-affair.  Though  Mrs. 
Robinson  would  not  give  her  approval  she 
tacitly  gave  her  aid  by  helping  to  conceal 
the  lovers'  meetings  from  Rowland  Robin- 


12  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

son  ;  and  it  was  with  her  knowledge  that  the 
lover  came  to  Hannah's  chamber,  where  he 
often  had  to  be  concealed  in  the  friendly 
cupboard. 

When  Peter  Simons  could  not  enter  the 
Robinson  house  he  stood  by  his  true-love's 
window  under  a  great  lilac-bush,  which  is 
still  growing,  sturdy  and  unbroken  under  the 
weight  of  a  century  of  years.  In  the  con- 
cealing shadow  of  the  lilac-bush  words  of 
love  might  be  whispered  to  the  fair  girl  who 
leaned  from  the  window,  or  letters  might  be 
exchanged  with  comparative  safety. 

But  true  love  ran  no  smoother  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  than  in  the  nineteenth,  and 
when  one  night  a  fair  hand  dropped  a  tender 
billet  into  the  gloom  of  the  lilac-bush,  old 
Rowland  Robinson  chanced  to  open  the  door 
of  his  house  and  he  saw  the  white  messenger 
descend.  Speechless  with  suspicion  and  rage 
he  rushed  to  the  lilac-bush  and  thrust  his 
buckthorn  stick  into  it  with  vigorous  blows 
until  a  man  ran  out  into  the  darkness,  whom 
the  irate  father  in  the  second's  glimpse  recog- 
nized as  the  ' l  wretched  French  dancing-mas- 
ter" who  taught  his  nephews. 

The  horrified  and  disgusted  anger  of  Row- 
land Robinson  and  the  scene  that  ensued 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT         13 

within  doors  can  well  be  imagined ;  little 
peace  or  happiness  was  there  for  Hannah 
after  her  father's  discovery.  Updike,  in  his 
"  History  of  the  Narragansett  Church,"  says 
of  her  life  at  this  time:  "  If  she  walked, 
her  movements  were  watched ;  if  she  rode, 
'a  servant  was  ordered  to  be  in  constant  at- 
tendance; if  a  visit  was  contemplated,  her 
father  immediately  suspected  it  was  only  a 
pretext  for  an  arranged  interview  ;  and  even 
after  departure,  if  the  most  trifling  circum- 
stance gave  color  to  suspicion,  he  would  im- 
mediately pursue  and  compel  her  to  return. 
In  one  instance  she  left  horrue  to  visit  her 
aunt  in  New  London ;  her  father  soon  af- 
terward discovered  from  his  windows  a  ves- 
sel leaving  Newport  and  taking  a  course 
toward  the  same  place.  Although  the  vessel 
and  the  persons  on  board  were  wholly  un- 
known to  him,  his  jealousies  were  immedi- 
ately aroused.  Conjecturing  it  was  Mr. 
Simons  intending  to  fulfil  an  arrangement 
previously  made,  he  hastened  to  New  Lon- 
don, arrived  a  few  hours  only  after  his 
daughter,  and  insisted  on  her  instant  return. 
No  persuasions  or  argument  could  induce 
him  to  change  his  determination,  and  she 
was  compelled  to  return  with  him." 


14  IN  OLD   NARRAGANSETT 

Though  Rowland  Robinson  was  firm  in 
his  determination  and  constant  in  his  action 
to  prevent  the  lovers  from  meeting,  Hannah 
— the  true  daughter  of  her  father — was  equal- 
ly determined  not  to  give  up  her  sweetheart ; 
and  as  the  Narragansett  neighbors,  like  the 
rest  of  the  world,  "dearly  loved  a  lover," 
they  gladly  assisted  the  romance  by  ex- 
changing letters  and  arranging  meetings  for 
the  lovers.  Months  of  harassing  suspicions 
and  angry  words  at  home,  and  frightened 
meetings  with  her  lover  away  from  home, 
told  so  upon  Hannah's  health  that  her  mo- 
ther finally  permitted  to  be  carried  into  exe- 
cution a  long-planned  scheme  of  elopement. 
It  was  finally  arranged  through  the  agency 
and  assistance  of  a  young  friend  of  Hannah's 
— Miss  Belden — and  the  ever  sentimental 
colonel-uncle. 

Invitations  for  a  great  ball  had  been  sent 
out  all  over  Narragansett,  and  to  many  in 
Boston,  Providence,  and  Newport.  It  was  to 
be  given  by  Mrs.  Updike,  Hannah's  aunt. 
She  lived  eight  miles  north  of  Rowland 
Robinson's  home,  in  the  old  historic  house 
which  is  still  standing  and  is  now  known  as 
Cocumcussuc.  A  portion  of  it  was  the 
first  house  or  fort  built  by  the  English  in 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT          15 

Narragansett  in  the  year  1636.  Though 
Hannah's  father  was  unwilling  to  allow  his 
daughter  out  of  his  sight,  he  at  last  consent- 
ed that  both  Hannah  and  Mary  should  go  to 
their  aunt's  ball.  They  set  out  on  horse- 
back, accompanied  by  faithful  Prince,  the  son 
of  Queen  Abigail,  and  were  met,  as  had  been 
arranged,  in  the  thick  woods  on  the  top  of 
Ridge  Hill,  by  Mr.  Simons  with  a  closed 
carriage.  Into  this  conveyance  Hannah  en- 
tered with  her  lover,  in  spite  of  her  sister's 
tears  and  Prince's  frantic  appeals,  and  rode 
off  to  Providence,  where  the  eloping  couple 
were  married. 

When  the  news  of  Hannah's  disobedience 
came  to  the  knowledge  of  Rowland  Robin- 
son, his  rage  and  disgust  knew  no  bounds. 
He  forbade  his  family  ever  to  communicate 
with  Hannah  again  ;  and  knowing  well  that 
she  must  have  been  assisted  in  carrying  out 
her  plans  to  elope,  he  offered  a  large  reward 
to  anyone  who  would  make  known  to  him 
the  names  of  the  persons  who  had  aided  her 
escape. 

It  would  seem  that  the  fair  bride  should 
be  called  Fortunate  Hannah,  since  she  man- 
aged to  evade  her  father's  vigilance  and  wed 
her  ardent  French  lover,  but  alas  !  Peter 


1 6  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

Simons,  like  many  another  hero  of  an  elope- 
ment, did  not  prove  worthy  of  the  great 
sacrifice.  Disappointed  through  the  im- 
placable anger  of  Rowland  Robinson  in  the 
hope  of  obtaining  any  of  his  wealth,  the 
unprincipled  husband  soon  neglected  his 
lovely  wife  and  at  last  deserted  her  for 
days  and  weeks.  Broken-hearted,  alone,  and 
poor,  the  unfortunate  girl  began  to  fail 
rapidly  in  health,  and  spent  many  weary, 
lonely  days  in  her  wretched  home  in  Prov- 
idence, having  for  her  only  companion  her 
dog  Marcus,  that  had  been  secretly  sent  to 
her  by  her  mother  from  her  Narragansett 
home. 

In  the  meantime  her  sister,  Mary  Robin- 
son, had  died  of  consumption;  and  her  moth- 
er, worn  out  by  grief,  had  completely  failed 
in  health.  Her  father,  though  outwardly 
stern  and  unforgiving,  was  evidently  exceed- 
ingly unhappy  at  the  alarming  news  of  his 
daughter's  state  of  health;  and  at  last,  of  his 
own  accord,  sent  to  live  with  her  and  care 
for  her  the  negro  maid  who  had  attended 
her  in  her  happy  girlhood.  He  also  con- 
veyed to  her  the  message  that  she  might 
come  home  and  would  be  warmly  welcomed, 
provided  she  would  reveal  to  him  the  names 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT         17 

of  those  who  assisted  in  her  elopement.  Her 
compliance  with  this  condition  was,  he  said, 
absolutely  imperative. 

On  receiving  this  message  Hannah  wrote 
in  answer,  with  trembling  hand,  a  most  af- 
fectionate letter,  stating  firmly  that  the 
sentiments  of  honor  which  he  himself  had 
both  taught  and  transmitted  to  her  forbade 
her  betraying  the  confidence  of  those  who 
had  aided  her  and  offended  him.  Mr.  Rob- 
inson eagerly  opened  the  letter,  but  his  face 
changed  when  he  read  her  decision,  and  he 
tossed  the  sheet  to  her  mother  with  the  con- 
temptuous remark,  "  Then  let  the  foolish 
thing  die  where  she  is  !  " 

As  weeks  passed  the  accounts  of  Han- 
nah's health  grew  more  alarming  still,  and 
it  was  evident  that  a  fierce  struggle  between 
love  and  pride  was  taking  place  in  the  un- 
happy father's  breast ;  one  day  he  rose  sud- 
denly from  the  dinner-table,  jumped  upon 
his  horse,  and  saying  to  his  wife  that  he 
should  be  away  from  home  for  a  day  or 
two,  started  on  the  thirty-five-mile  ride  to 
Providence.  He  remained  overnight  at  the 
Updike  farm  and  reached  his  daughter's 
house  in  Providence  at  noon.  Without  dis- 
mounting he  rapped  on  the  door  with  his 


1 8  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

riding-whip.  Full  of  joy  at  the  sight  of  her 
old  master  and  at  the  thought  of  the  happy 
reconciliation,  the  negro  maid  hastened  to 
the  door  with  the  entreaty  that  the  welcome 
visitor  would  come  at  once  to  the  poor  in- 
valid's chamber.  "  Ask  your  mistress,"  said 
Rowland  Robinson,  "whether  she  is  now 
ready  to  comply  with  her  father's  request  to 
know  the  names  of  her  fellow-conspirators, 
and  say  that  if  she  is,  he  will  come  in,  but 
on  no  other  conditions."  Poor  Hannah, 
torn  with  a  thousand  emotions,  still  clung  to 
her  decision  not  to  betray  her  friends,  and 
her  father,  without  another  word,  rode  away 
to  the  Updike  farm.  For  several  weeks  the 
stubborn  and  unhappy  father,  unable  to  live 
without  news  of  his  sick  daughter,  rode  at 
intervals  of  two  or  three  days  from  Narra- 
gansett  to  Providence,  knocked  at  Hannah's 
door,  asked  for  her  health,  and  left  without 
another  word. 

At  last,  her  friends  who  had  helped  in  her 
elopement,  hearing  of  her  father's  firm  deci- 
sion, which  barred  all  reconciliation,  insisted 
upon  her  revealing  to  him  their  names  and 
the  true  story  ;  and  when  Rowland  Robin- 
son next  rode  up  to  his  daughter's  door  he 
received  the  welcome  message  that  she  would 


A  NARRAGANSETT   ELOPEMENT          19 

see  him  and  tell  him  all.  When  he  entered 
that  barren  chamber  all  thought  of  discov- 
ering her  closely  guarded  secret  fled  at  once 
from  his  thoughts  as  he  gazed  at  the  wasted 
form  of  the  once  beautiful  girl.  He  knelt 
by  her  bedside  and  wept  aloud  in  anguish 
and  remorse.  As  soon  as  he  recovered  his 
composure  he  at  once  rode  to  his  home, 
from  whence  he  despatched  to  Providence 
in  a  fast-sailing  sloop  four  of  his  strongest 
and  trustiest  negro  men,  and  a  hand-litter 
for  the  sick,  which  was,  at  that  time  of 
rough  roads  and  few  carriages,  an  indispen- 
sable article  in  every  well-appointed  Narra- 
gansett  household.  Dusty,  travel-stained, 
and  tired,  without  waiting  for  a  night's  rest 
he  at  once  jumped  upon  a  fresh  horse  and, 
attended  by  Prince,  who  was  mounted  and 
led  a  horse  for  Hannah's  maid,  poor  Row- 
land Robinson  started  for  the  last  time  to 
ride  to  his  sick  daughter's  door. 

Upon  a  lovely  morning  in  June,  the  four 
strong  negroes,  bearing  the  litter  upon  which 
lay  the  sick  girl,  with  her  father  and  faithful 
Prince  riding  on  either  side,  slowly  wended 
their  way  to  poor  Hannah's  early  home. 
Those  who  know  the  beauty  of  sunny 
Narragansett  in  early  June,  when  the  roads 


20  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

are  everywhere  overhung  with  the  graceful, 
sweet  -  scented  blossoms  of  slender  locust- 
trees,  when  the  roadsides  are  one  luxuriant, 
blooming  garden  of  lovely  wild  flowers, 
and  the  fields  are  sweet  with  rich  clover, 
can  feel  the  strong  and  painful  contrast 
which  the  sad  figure  of  the  dying  girl  must 
have  formed  to  the  glowing  life  around. 

When  the  spot  was  reached  on  Ridge 
Hill  where  Hannah  had  seen  for  the  last 
time  her  sister  Mary,  Prince  saw  that  she 
covered  her  face  with  her  hands  and  cried. 
One  other  pathetic  incident  is  told  by 
"  Shepherd  Tom  "  of  the  homeward  journey. 
Though  on  every  side  lay  a  glory  of  spring 
flowers,  poor  Hannah,  with  thoughts  that  no 
one  can  fathom,  asked  her  father  to  pick  for 
her  and  lay  on  her  breast  a  withered  sprig 
of  the  pale  blossom  called  life-everlasting, 
which  had  bloomed  and  died  the  year  be- 
fore. 

At  last  the  painful  journey  was  ended ; 
of  the  sad  meeting  between  mother  and 
daughter,  and  of  the  sorrowful  faces  of  the 
faithful  servants,  it  is  needless  to  write  in 
detail. 

That  night  a  whip-poor-will — the  bird  be- 
lieved throughout  Narragansett  to  be  the 


A  NARRAGANSETT  ELOPEMENT         21 

harbinger  of  death — perched  on  the  lilac- 
bush  under  the  window  of  the  chamber 
where  once  again  slept  Unfortunate  Han- 
nah; and  throughout  the  long  dark  hours 
sounded  gloomily  in  the  father's  ears  the 
sad,  ominous  cry  of  "  Whip-poor-will ! 
Whip  -  poor  -  will !  "  The  following  day 
poor  Hannah  died. 

Again  did  four  strong  men  bear  on  their 
shoulders  the  form  of  the  once  beautiful  girl, 
as  they  passed  under  the  branches  of  the 
sweet-scented  lilac  to  the  grave  near  the  old 
house  where  still  is  shown  the  head-stone 
that  marks  the  last  resting-place  of  Unfortu- 
nate Hannah  Robinson. 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS 

DURING  the  first  years  of  this  century  there 
could  be  found  in  every  English  town,  vil- 
lage, and  hamlet  many  hand-looms  and  many 
weavers  who  on  these  looms  wove  for  their 
neighbors  and  for  small  cloth-jobbers  strong 
homespun  woollen  stuffs,  rag-carpets,  woollen 
sheets,  cotton  and  wool  bed-spreads,  flannels, 
coarse  linen  and  tow,  heavy  cotton  cloth  and 
fine  table  and  bed  linen.  These  hand-looms 
lingered  in  use  till  about  1840.  So  uni- 
versal was  then  the  extinction  of  hand- 
weaving  through  the  vast  growth  of  power- 
loom  manufacture  and  of  spinning  by  steam- 
spindle,  and  so  sudden  and  complete  the 
destruction  and  vanishing  of  all  the  old-time 
implements  and  machines,  that  when,  ten 
years  ago,  under  the  stimulus  of  Ruskin's 
fiery  appeal  for  the  revivifying  of  hand- 
spinning  and  hand  -  weaving,  these  house- 
hold arts  were  again  started  in  Westmore- 
land, but  a  single  linen-loom  could  be  found 
for  the  work. 

25 


26  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

In  the  American  colonies  hand-weaving 
was  also  a  universal  industrial  art.  In  no 
part  of  the  country  has  the  industry  lingered 
longer  than  in  old  Narragansett.  In  many 
old  New  England  towns  single  hand-looms 
can  be  found,  some  in  running  order,  and 
with  owners  capable  of  running  them  to  make 
rag-carpets.  Others  are  still  standing,  cob- 
webbed  and  dusty,  in  attic  lofts,  lean-to 
chambers,  woodsheds,  or  barns,  with  no  one 
to  set  the  piece  or  fill  the  shuttles.  In  Nar- 
ragansett I  know  a  score  of  old  looms  in 
good  running  order,  though,  save  in  one  in- 
stance, set  only  for  weaving  rag-carpets ;  in 
many  cases  the  owners,  who  do  not  make 
weaving  a  trade,  will  not  ' '  start  them  up ' ' 
for  weaving  less  than  a  hundred  yards  of  car- 
peting. This  is  a  long  strip  for  a  room  in  a 
cottage  or  farm-house,  so  neighbors  frequent- 
ly join  together  in  ordering  these  carpets, 
and  in  company  send  vast  rolls  of  the  fill- 
ing, which  is  made  of  inch-wide  strips  of 
cloth  of  all  colors  and  materials  sewed  in 
long  strips.  Within  a  few  years  these  old 
hand -looms  have  been  used  for  weaving  rag- 
portieres  made  of  silk  strips. 

Weaving  was  a  very  respectable  occupa- 
tion. It  is  told  that  the  regicide  Judge 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  27 

Whalley  lived  to  great  old  age  in  Narra- 
gansett — one  hundred  and  three  years — and 
earned  his  living  by  weaving.  The  son  of 
the  Congregational  minister  at  Narragansett, 
Dr.  Torrey,  was  a  weaver.  The  province  was 
full  of  weavers.  Miss  Hazard  gives  the 
names  of  many  in  her  "College  Tom." 
With  all  the  spinning-jennies  for  spinning  a 
vast  supply  of  thread  and  yarn,  there  were 
no  power-looms  in  Narragansett  till  1812. 
Hand -looms  made  up  all  the  yarn  and  thread 
that  were  produced.  The  prince  of  Narra- 
gansett weavers  was  Martin  Read.  In  1761 
he  was  baptized  in  St.  Paul's  Church  as 
"  Martin  Read,  an  adult,  the  Parish  Clerk." 
He  was  a  devoted  lover  of  the  church  and 
was  sexton  for  many  years.  He  led  the 
singing,  and  it  is  said  that  under  his  leader- 
ship the  Venite  was  first  chanted  in  America. 
During  the  troubled  and  rector-less  days  of 
the  Revolution,  he  helped  the  parish  work 
along  by  reading  morning-prayers  and  the 
funeral -service  for  the  dead. 

He  was  apprenticed,  an  orphan,  at  seven 
years  of  age  to  a  diaper-weaver,  and  served 
till  he  was  of  age,  with  one  term  only  of 
schooling  ;  but  he  was  ambitious  and  read 
eagerly  instructive  books,  especially  on  weav- 


28  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ing  and  kindred  arts.  He  married  the 
daughter  of  an  Irish  weaver,  and  soon  had 
journeymen  and  apprentices,  whom  he  taught 
to  sing  as  they  wove  ;  and  when  they  did 
not  sing  the  men  whistled  the  airs,  and  with 
singing  and  whistling  the  \vork  speeded. 

This  singing  at  the  loom  was  not  a  pecu- 
liarity of  Martin  Read's.  We  know  the  ex- 
clamation of  Falstaff:  "I  would  I  were  a 
weaver,  I  could  sing  Psalms  and  all  man- 
ner of  songs."  Nares  says  weavers  were 
generally  good  singers,  and  that  as  they  sat 
at  their  work  they  practised  part-singing. 
Many  of  the  weavers  in  Queen  Elizabeth's 
day  were  Flemish  Calvinists  and  therefore 
given  to  psalm-singing,  hence  Falstaff  s  ref- 
erence. 

One  weaver,  named  James  Maxwell,  wrote 
some  "  Weaver's  Meditations  "  in  rhyme  in 
1756.  The  frontispiece  of  his  book — his 
portrait  at  his  loom — is  thus  inscribed : 

"Lo,  how  'twixt  heaven  and  earth  I  swing, 

And  whilst  the  shuttle  swiftly  flies, 
With  cheerful  heart  I  work  and  sing, 
And  envy  none  beneath  the  skies." 

Martin  Read  reared  his  family  well,  and 
in  the  Episcopal  Church.  His  son,  Rev.  Dr. 


NARRAGANSETT   WEAVERS  29 

Read,  preached  for  many  years  at  Christ's 
Church  in  Poughkeepsie.  He  wove  coverlets, 
blankets,  broadcloth,  flannel,  worsted,  linen, 
tow-cloth,  and  calamanco.  This  last  was 
a  glossy  woollen  twilled  fabric,  sometimes 
woven  in  a  pattern  in  the  warp.  James  Fon- 
taine, a  Huguenot  weaver,  says  it  was  made  of 
a  fine  double-twisted  worsted.  It  was  much 
used  for  the  nightgowns  and  banians  worn 
by  substantial  citizens  of  the  day,  and  for 
women's  winter-gowns. 

Other  goods  made  by  Weaver  Read  were 
duroy,  durant,  and  crocus,  a  coarse  tow- 
stuff  for  servants'  wear.  This  word,  crocus, 
still  may  be  heard  in  Virginia,  and  perhaps 
elsewhere  in  the  South,  where  it  was  more 
and  longer  used  than  in  Narragansett. 

Martin  Read  lived  near  the  old  church  he 
so  dearly  loved,  and  a  sightly  spot  it  was  for 
a  home.  Still  standing  beside  the  church 
foundation,  the  site  where  the  church  first 
stood,  is  the  deserted  house  in  which  Mar- 
tin Read  lived  and  wove  and  whistled  and 
sung.  On  the  road  near  his  home  lives  to- 
day the  last  of  the  old-time  weavers,  one  who 
can  weave  woollen  and  linen  stuffs.  Hand- 
weaving  is  not  with  him  an  accidental  in- 
dustrial makeshift,  but  his  every-day  occupa- 


30  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

tion  and  means  of  livelihood.  He  learned 
to  weave  from  one  of  Martin  Read's  appren- 
tices. 

His  low,  weather-beaten  house,  set  in  a 
close-walled  garden,  is  one  of  the  most  pict- 
uresque in  old  Narragansett.  We  entered 
from  a  glory  of  midsummer  sunlight  into 
a  cool,  pale-green  light  which  penetrated 
the  rooms  through  the  heavy  shadows  of 
the  rugged  old  cedar-trees  that  overhung  the 
roof  and  the  ancient  lilacs  that  pressed  close 
to  the  windows. 

There  has  ever  been  associated  in  my  mind 
with  the  trade  of  weaving  the  pale  and  sickly 
appearance  and  bearing  of  many  English  mill 
weavers ;  and,  though  ever  of  country  life, 
this  Yankee  weaver  was  no  exception  to  the 
rule.  His  skin,  of  extreme  delicacy,  was 
pale,  yet  suffused  at  times  with  that  semi- 
transparent  flush  which  is  seldom  seen  save 
on  those  whose  life  is  wholly  indoors.  His 
hair  and  beard  were  long  and  white,  and  had 
evidently  been  light-brown  before  they  were 
white;  his  bright  blue  eyes  looked  pleasant- 
ly and  intelligently  out  from  the  wisps  of 
white  hair.  His  visible  attire  was  a  clean, 
but  collarless,  white  shirt  and  a  pair  of  blue 
overalls  j  his  feet  were  bare.  We  mounted 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  31 

with  him  the  narrow  enclosed  staircase   to 
the  loom-loft. 

There  was  such  a  flood  of  color  out  of 
doors,  the  fields  and  trees  were  so  green,  the 
tangle  of  larkspurs  in  the  garden  was  so  blue, 
the  sunbeams  so  radiant,  that  the  attic  seemed 
but  a  dull  abiding-place  for  a  summer's  day; 
but  as  the  eye  grew  accustomed  to  the  dim- 
mer light  and  learned  to  avoid  the  piercing 
arrows  of  sunshine  that  burned  in  through  the 
heart-shaped  holes  in  the  shutters  and  made 
every  mote  of  wavering  dust  in  their  path  a 
point  of  unbearable  glitter,  then  the  attic 
seemed  quiet  and  peaceful,  and  its  shadows 
were  grateful ;  and  even  the  bang,  bang  of 
the  loom  when  it  was  started  up  was  not  a 
garish  rattle.  Heaps  of  gay  woollen  yarns 
lay  under  the  eaves,  and  a  roll  or  two  of  rag- 
carpeting  and  strips  of  worn-out  bed-cover- 
lets of  various  patterns  were  hung  on  the 
beams  or  piled  in  heaps.  There  were  vast 
boxes  of  cotton  twine ;  and  many  yarn-beams 
ready  wound,  and  swifts  and  quilling-wheels 
and  ' '  scarnes, ' '  many  in  number,  thrust  un- 
der the  garret  eaves.  Among  the  discarded 
wool-wheels  and  flax-wheels  heaped  high  in 
the  corner — obsolete  before  their  fellow,  the 
hand-loom — I  did  not  peer  deep.  Though 


32  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

neglected,  they  are  jealously  treasured,  for 
"that  was  grandma's  foot -wheel,"  and 
' 'Aunt  Eunice  used  that  wool-wheel  sixty- 
two  year, ' '  showed  that  what  seemed  to  me 
useless  lumber  was  haloed  with  association 
and  tradition.  I  have  never  seen  or  felt  else- 
where any  such  picture,  any  such  atmosphere 
of  an  industrial  life  that  is  forever  past,  as  that 
old-time  weaving.  The  dim  half-light  of  the 
loom-room  and  the  darker  garret  beyond ; 
the  ancient  chairs  that  thrust  out  a  broken 
arm,  and  tables  that  put  forth  a  claw-foot 
from  the  shadows ;  the  low  buzzing  of  hor- 
nets that  fluttered  against  the  upper  skylight 
or  hung  in  dull  clusters  on  the  window-frame 
— hornets  so  dull,  so  feeble,  so  innocuous  in 
their  helplessness  that  they  seemed  the  an- 
cients of  their  day;  the  eerie  clamor  of  swal- 
lows in  the  chimney;  the  pungent  aroma  of 
" dry,  forgotten  herbs,"  that  swayed  in  the 
summer  wind  from  every  rafter;  and  the 
weaver,  pale  and  silent,  laboriously  weaving 
his  slow-growing  web  with  a  patience  of  past 
ages  of  workers,  a  patience  so  foreign  to  our 
present  high-pressure  and  double-speed  rates 
that  he  seemed  a  century  old,  the  very  spirit 
of  colonial,  nay,  of  mediaeval  days. 

There  was  a  monotonous  yet  well-controlled 


NARRAGANSETT   WEAVERS  33 

precision  in  this  weaver's  work  that  was 
most  soothing,  and  that  seems  to  be  a  char- 
acteristic influence  of  the  homespun  indus- 
tries. It  was  felt  by  Wordsworth  and  voiced 
in  his  sonnet : 

4 '  Grief,  thou  hast  lost  an  ever-ready  friend 
Now  that  the  cottage  spinning-wheel  is  mute." 

This  precision  in  work  is  that  of  the 
skilled  hand  and  thinking  brain  controlling 
the  machine,  not  the  vast  power  of  steam  re- 
lentlessly crowding  the  overworked  body 
and  dulled  brain. 

By  this  hand-weaving,  as  if  to  prove  Rus- 
kin's  glowing  and  inspiring  assertions,  this 
weaver  earns  an  independent  living  in  intel- 
ligent work,  of  reasonable  hours,  in  a  com- 
fortable house,  and  in  conditions  favorable 
to  health — a  vast  contrast  to  the  overworked, 
unhealthy,  poorly  fed,  stultified  factory- 
worker.  His  business  has  so  prospered  of 
late  that  he  has  had  a  trade-card  printed  at 
the  village  printer's  like  any  other  indepen- 
dent manufacturer.  From  it  I  learn  that  he 
weaves  rag-carpets,  bed-coverlets,  and  hap- 
harlots.  Hap-harlots,  forsooth  !  could  any- 
one believe  that  obsolete  word  had  been 


34  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

used  since  Holinshed's  day?  He  wrote  in 
1570,  in  his  "  Chronicles  of  England," 
etc.  : 


' '  Our  fathers  have  lien  full  oft  upon  straw  pallets 
or  rough  mats,  covered  onlie  with  a  sheet  under  cover- 
lets made  of  dagswain  or  hap-harlots,  and  a  good 
round  log  under  their  heads  instead  of  a  bolster." 

Yet  here  have  been  Narragansett  weavers 
weaving  hap-harlots,  and  sleeping  under  hap- 
harlots,  and  speaking  of  hap-harlots  as  though 
three  centuries  ago  were  as  yesterday.  I 
presume  they  have  made  dagswains  also, 
since  there  still  exists  bills  of  Narragansett 
shepherds  for  dagging  sheep. 

The  old-time  cotton  and  wool  bed-spreads 
or  coverlets,  seen  of  old  on  every  four-post 
bedstead,  he  now  sells  for  portieres  and  bath- 
room rugs,  as  well  as  for  bed  and  couch 
spreads.  They  are  woven  in  simple  geo- 
metric patterns,  just  as  in  the  times  of  the 
ancient  Britons,  when  the  wools  of  the  weft 
were  dyed  with  woad  and  broom.  The  pat- 
terns are  nearly  all  over  a  century  old.  He 
has  a  worn  pattern-book  with  bewildering 
rules  for  setting  the  heddles  for  over  fifty 
designs.  Quaint  of  name  are  the  patterns  : 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  35 

"  chariot- wheels  and  church-windows,"  is 
a  bold,  large  design;  ' ' church-steps, "  a 
simpler  one;  "bachelors'  fancy,"  "devil's 
fancy,"  "five  doves  in  a  row,"  "shooting- 
star,"  "rising  sun,"  "rail  fence,"  "green 
veils,"  offer  little  in  their  designs  to  give 
reason  for  their  names.  "Whig  rose," 
"Perry's  Victory,"  and  "Lady  Washing- 
ton's fancy,"  show  an  historical  influence  in 
naming.  "  Orange-peel  "  is  simply  a  series 
of  oblong  hexagons  honeycombed  together. 
"  All  summer  and  all  winter  "  was  similar. 
"Bricks  and  blocks"  is  evenly  checkered. 
"  Capus  diaper"  is  more  a  complicated 
design  for  weaving  damask  linen,  taking  five 
harnesses.  Floral  names  are  common,  such 
as  "Dutch  tulip,"  "rose  in  bloom," 
"pansies  in  the  wilderness,"  "five  snow- 
balls," etc. 

The  loom  on  which  this  Narragansett 
weaver  works  might  be  six  centuries  old. 
You  may  see  precisely  similar  ones  pictured 
by  Hogarth  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  ;  and  an  older  one  still  in  the  Cam- 
panile at  Florence,  by  Giotto,  in  1334. 

These  excerpts  from  a  letter  of  Weaver 
Rose's  give  some  pleasant  weaver's  lore,  and 
are  in  the  lucid,  simple,  and  quaint  English 


36  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

to  be  expected  of  a  man  who  still  weaves  and 
talks  of  hap-harlots  : 

"My  grandfather  and  grandmother  Robert  and 
Mary  Northrup  lived  at  what  is  now  called  Stuart  Vale 
but  then  known  as  the  Fish  Pond,  in  a  little  ham- 
let of  four  houses,  only  one  of  which,  my  grand- 
father's, is  now  standing.  He  owned  a  shore  and 
fished  in  the  spring  and  wove  some  at  home  and 
went  out  amongst  the  larger  farmers  working  at  his 
trade  of  weaving,  whilst  his  wife  carried  on  the  weav- 
ing at  home  and  had  a  number  of  apprentices.  He 
learned  his  trade  of  weaving  of  Martin  Read,  the 
deacon  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  who  lived  a  few  rods 
from  the  church.  He  died  in  1822,  his  wife  lived 
till  1848.  The  spool  I  gave  you  wras  made  by  Lang- 
worthy  Pierce,  a  veteran  of  the  Revolution.  It  has 
the  initials  of  his  name.  I  send  you  now  one  of  his 
shuttles  used  for  weaving  broadcloth,  and  a  square 
of  linen  I  have  woven  for  you  of  a  pattern  of  five 
harnesses  called  Browbey.  The  looms  here  in  Nar- 
ragansett  were  all  made  by  local  carpenters.  Stephen 
Northrup  made  looms,  and  Freeborn  Church  made 
looms  and  spinning  wheels.  I  have  2  of  his  make. 
Friend  Earle  !  more  money  can  be  made  by  weaving 
than  farming.  I  have  wove  30  yards  of  rag  carpet 
in  one  day  at  10  cents  a  yard;  or  23  cents  a  yard 
when  I  found  the  warp.  There  was  a  man  here  by 
the  name  of  Eber  Sherman,  he  called  himself  Slip- 
pery Eber.  He  died  in  the  war  of  1812  ;  his  widow 
worked  at  spinning  for  25  cents  per  day  and  support- 
ed herself  and  one  son  well  on  that  wage.  One  dollar 
and  a  half  per  week  was  regular  wage  for  a  woman's 


NARRAGANSETT   WEAVERS  37 

work.  It  took  a  woman  one  week  to  weave  a  cover- 
let of  3  yards  long  and  2%  yards  wide.  Mahala  Doug- 
las went  out  to  work  at  one  dollar  and  a  half  per  week 
making  butter  and  cheese,  milking  seven  cows  every 
week  day  and  nine  on  Sunday.  She  died  leaving  a 
large  Estate,  several  thousand  dollars,  which  her 
Legatees  had  no  trouble  in  spending  in  six  weeks. 
My  grandfather  was  one  of  eight  children.  One 
brother  was  Rev.  William  Northrup ;  Thurston 
Northrup,  another  brother,  was  a  school-teacher  and 
a  weaver  of  coverlets  and  cloth.  John  Northrup 
was  called  Weaver  John.  He  was  a  coverlet  weaver. 
John  Congdon  was  a  maker  of  Weavers'  reeds  or 
slays.  I  have  70  or  80  of  his  make  in  my  house. 
I  have  a  reed  that  my  grandfather  Northrup  had 
made  when  he  went  to  the  Island  of  Rhode  Isl- 
and weaving  Broadcloth.  He  received  50  cents 
per  day  pay.  Good  Cream  Cheese  was  3  cents  a 
pound  at  the  same  time  of  the  Embargo  in  the  war  of 
1812.  I  have  an  Eight  and  Twenty  slay  with  29 
Beer  that  cost  one  dollar,  made  by  John  Congdon  70 
years  ago,  as  good  as  when  made.  He  lived  in 
North  Kingston." 

The  word  slay  or  sley,  meaning  a  weavers' 
reed,  has  not  been  used  commonly  in  Eng- 
land for  many  years,  and  is  contemporary 
with  hap-harlot.  A  beer  was  a  coimting-off 
of  forty  warp-threads. 

It  may  be  seen  by  this  letter  how  many 
classes  of  workmen  were  kept  busily  em- 
ployed by  these  homespun  industries ;  mak- 


38  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ers  of  looms,  wheels,  reeds,  scarnes,  rad- 
dles, temples,  swifts,  niddy-noddys,  spools, 
and  shuttles  ;  and  turners  of  warp  -  beams 
and  cloth-beams.  The  proper  shaping  of  a 
shuttle  was  as  important  as  the  shaping  of 
a  boat's  hull.  When  the  shuttle  was  carefully 
whittled  out,  smoothed  off  with  glass,  light- 
ly shod  with  steel,  and  marked  by  burnt-in 
letters  with  the  maker's  initials,  it  was  a 
proper  piece  of  work,  one  for  a  craftsman 
to  be  distinctly  proud  of.  Spools  could 
be  turned  on  a  lathe  but  were  marked  by 
hand.  No  wonder  our  weaver  loved  his  old 
worn-out  rubbish ;  every  piece  had  been 
made  and  used  by  his  kinsfolk  and  neigh- 
bors, who  had  put  into  every  spool,  shuttle, 
and  loom  good,  faithful  hand- work  ;  and,  like 
the  cloths  he  wove,  they  wore  well. 

Weaver  Rose  would  be  an  unimpeachable 
candidate  for  many  of  our  modern  patriotic- 
hereditary  societies.  One  great-great-grand- 
father held  a  commission  under  King  George 
III.,  which  the  weaver  still  has.  Others 
were  members  of  the  provincial  assemblies. 
Two  great-uncles  were  taken  on  board  a 
Yankee  privateer  in  the  Revolution,  carried 
to  England  to  Dartmoor  Prison,  and  never 
heard  of  afterward.  The  son  of  one  of 


NARRAGANSETT   WEAVERS  39 

those  patriots  was  captured  in  the  War  of 
1812,  and  kept  eight  years  at  Dartmoor,  while 
he  was  mourned  in  Narragansett  as  dead. 
He  was  then  released,  returned  home,  and 
held  to  his  death  an  office  under  the  govern- 
ment at  Wickford,  a  Narragansett  seaport. 
One  great-uncle  was  starved  to  death  in  the 
prison-ship  Jersey  in  the  Revolution,  and 
another  lost  his  life  in  Newport  during  im- 
prisonment by  the  British.  Grandfather 
James  Rose  was  with  the  famous  Kingston 
Reds  in  the  Battle  of  Rhode  Island  and 
other  Revolutionary  encounters ;  and  the 
weaver's  father,  William  Rose,  fought  in  the 
War  of  1812.  His  great-great-grandfather 
Eldred  killed  the  famous  Indian  warrior 
Hunewell,  after  that  cruel  Narragansett 
tragedy,  the  Swamp  Fight.  Hunewell  was 
naked  and  covered  with  grease,  but  he  was 
not  slippery  enough  to  escape  the  bitter 
Englishman,  who  had  been  fighting  for  days. 
This  tragedy  was  at  Silver  Spring,  about  two 
miles  from  the  weaver's  home.  Another 
Indian  chased  Eldred,  but  without  capturing 
him.  The  chase  was  long,  and  Eldred  did 
not  spend  much  time  in  looking  backward, 
but  he  never  forgot  the  Indian's  face ;  and 
some  years  later  he  met  in  Newport  an  Ind- 


40  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ian  who  was  very  smooth  and  friendly,  but 
whom  he  at  once  recognized  as  his  old-time 
enemy.  The  weaver  thus  grimly  and  la- 
conically tells  the  sequel :  "  Grandfather  got 
an  awl  and  settled  it  in  his  forehead  and 
finished  him."  Great-grandmother  Austin 
was  one  of  sixteen  children.  Their  names 
were  Parvis,  Picus,  Piersus,  Prisemus,  Polyb- 
ius,  Lois,  Lettice,  Avis,  Anstice,  Eunice, 
Mary,  John,  Elizabeth,  Ruth,  Freelove.  All 
lived  to  be  three-score  and  ten,  and  one  to 
be  five-score  and  two  years  old. 

I  have  dwelt  somewhat  at  length  on  the 
sturdy  fighting  ancestry  of  this  weaver,  with 
a  distinct  sense  of  pleasure  at  the  quality  of 
his  forebears.  He  is,  in  the  best  sense,  a 
pure  American,  with  not  a  drop  of  admixt- 
ure of  the  blood  from  recent  immigrations. 
Some  of  his  ancestors  were  those  who  made 
the  original  Petaquamscut  purchase  from  the 
Indians,  and  here  he  lives  on  the  very  land 
they  purchased.  It  is  such  examples  as 
this  that  give  dignity  to  New  England  rural 
life,  give  us  a  sense  of  not  being  offensive- 
ly new.  In  my  genealogical  researches  in 
England  I  have  not  found  such  cases  nearly 
as  common  as  in  New  England.  Surprise 
and  even  annoyance  is  shown  in  England  at 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  41 

your  expectation  and  hope  to  find  descend- 
ants of  the  original  owners  occupying  farm- 
houses and  manors  two  hundred  years  old. 

Had  the  weaving  been  the  only  portion  of 
the  work  done  in  the  farm-house  it  would 
seem  an  important  addition  to  the  round  of 
domestic  duties,  but  every  step  in  the  pro- 
duction of  clothing  was  done  at  home,  as  ex- 
pressed by  Miss  Hazard  of  her  great-grand- 
father's household  in  Narragansett :  "  From 
the  shepherd  who  dagged  the  sheep,  the 
wool-comber  who  combed  the  wool,  the 
spinners  who  spun,  the  weavers  who  wove, 
all  in  regular  order  till  the  travelling  tailor 
made  the  clothes  up,  and  Thomas  Hazard 
went  to  meeting  in  a  suit  made  from  wool  of 
his  own  growing."  The  "all-wool  goods, 
yard  wide,"  which  we  so  glibly  purchase 
to-day  meant  to  the  Narragansett  dame  the 
work  of  months  from  the  time  the  fleeces 
were  given  to  her  deft  fingers.  After  dag- 
locks,  bands,  feltings,  tarred  locks,  were 
skilfully  cut  out,  the  white  locks  were  care- 
fully tossed  and  separated,  and  tied  in  net 
bags  with  tallies,  to  be  dyed.  The  homely 
saying,  "dyed  in  the  wool,"  indicated  a 
process  of  much  skill.  Indigo  furnished  the 
blue  shades,  madder  and  logwood  the  red. 


42  IN  OLD   NARRAGANSETT 

Sassafras,  fustic,  hickory,  and  oak  bark  fur- 
nished yellow  and  brown.  It  will  be  noted 
that  the  old-time  dyes  were  all  vegetable. 
After  the  dyeing  mixed  colors  could  be 
made  by  spreading  in  layers  and  carding 
them  over  and  over  again.  In  carding 
'wool,  the  cards  should  be  kept  warm  and 
the  wool  very  slightly  greased  with  rape-oil 
or  "  swines'  -grease. "  At  last  the  wool  was 
carded  into  light  rolls  and  was  ready  for 
the  wheel. 

An  old  writer  says,  "  The  action  of  spin- 
ning must  be  learned  by  practice,  not  by 
relation."  The  grace  and  beauty  of  wool- 
spinning,  ever  sung  by  the  poets,  need  not 
be  described.  Stepping  lightly  backward 
and  forward,  with  arms  at  times  high  in  the 
air,  now  low  at  the  side,  often  by  the  light 
only  of  the  fire,  the  worker,  no  matter  what 
her  age,  seemed  the  perfection  of  the  grace 
of  motion  ;  and  the  beauty  of  the  occupation 
makes  the  name  of  spinster  (the  only  title  by 
law  of  every  single  woman)  a  title  of  honor 
and  dignity. 

The  preparation  of  flax  was  infinitely  more 
tedious  and  more  complicated.  From  the 
time  the  tender  plant  springs  up,  through 
pulling,  spreading,  drying,  rippling,  stack- 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  43 

ing,  rotting,  cleaning,  braking,  swingling, 
beetling,  ruffling,  hetchelling,  spreading,  and 
drawing,  there  are  in  all  over  twenty  dex- 
terous manipulations  till  the  flax  is  ready  for 
the  wheel,  the  most  skilful  manipulation  of 
all,  and  is  wrapped  round  the  spindle.  Flax 
thread  was  spun  on  the  small  flax-wheel. 
"  Lint  on  the  wee  wheel,  woo'  on  the  muc- 
kle."  It  was  reeled  into  skeins  on  a  clock- 
reel,  which  ticked  when  the  requisite  number 
had  been  wound,  when  the  spinner  stopped 
and  tied  the  skein.  A  quaint  old  ballad  has 
the  refrain  : 

"  And  he  kissed  Mistress  Polly  when  the  clock-reel 
ticked." 

These  knots  of  linen  thread  had  to  be 
bleached  before  they  were  woven.  They 
were  soaked  in  water  for  days,  and  constantly 
wrung  out;  they  were  washed  again  and 
again  in  the  brook;  they  were  "bucked" 
with  ashes  and  hot  water  in  a  bucking-tub; 
they  were  seethed,  soaked,  rinsed,  dried,  and 
wound  on  bobbins  and  quills  for  the  loom. 
In  spite  of  all  this  bleaching,  the  linen 
web,  when  woven,  would  not  be  white,  and 
it  afterward  went  through  twoscore  more 
processes  of  bucking,  possing,  rinsing,  dry- 


44  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ing,  and  grassing.  In  all,  forty  bleaching 
manipulations  were  necessary  for  "light 
linens."  Thus,  at  least,  sixteen  months  had 
passed  since  the  flax-seed  had  been  sown, 
during  which  the  good-wife  had  not  "  eaten 
the  bread  of  idleness. ' ' 

With  the  passing  of  these  old-time  house- 
hold arts  of  spinning  and  weaving,  went  also 
the  household  independence.  Well  timed 
was  our  struggle  for  freedom  from  British 
rule,  when  every  man  and  wife  on  their  own 
farm  held  everything  necessary  for  life  and 
comfort — food,  shelter,  fuel,  illumination, 
clothing.  What  need  had  he  or  she  to  fear 
any  king  ?  It  could  not  be  such  an  inde- 
pendent revolt  to-day;  in  the  matter  of 
clothing  alone,  no  family  could  be  indepen- 
dent of  outside  assistance. 

The  old-time  preparatory  work  of  the 
weaver  is  much  simplified  for  this  Narragan- 
sett  weaver  in  modern  times,  by  the  use  of 
machine-spun  threads  and  yarns.  The  warp, 
of  these  bed  coverlets  is  of  strong  twine  or 
thread,  while  the  weft  is  of  various  woollen 
yarns  or  zephyrs  or  crewels,  bought  at  mills. 
These  latter  are  aniline-dyed,  and  in  no  ar- 
tistic sense  equal  the  old  indigo,  hickory, 
sassafras,  or  madder  home-dyed  wools  of 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  45 

yore.  These  skeins  of  yarn  are  prepared  for 
use  by  spreading  them  on  a  reel  or  swifts, 
and  winding  the  yarn  off  on  quills  in  a  quill- 
ing-wheel, which  is  somewhat  like  a  simpli- 
fied spinning-wheel. 

Besides  these  weavers  who  worked  in  their 
own  homes,  making  their  own  wool  into 
cloth  to  sell,  or  weaving  the  thread  and 
yarn  brought  to  them  by  their  neighbors, 
there  was  a  distinct  class  of  travelling  weav- 
ers, who  went  from  house  to  house  working 
for  a  few  shillings  a  day  and  their  "keep." 
They  often  were  quaint  and  curious  charac- 
ters; frequently  what  were  known  as  "natu- 
ral preachers;"  that  is,  either  mystic  or 
fanatic  souls  who  tried  to  supplement  or  su- 
persede the  religious  teaching  of  the  com- 
munity by  itinerant  preaching.  Such  teach- 
ers and  preachers  have  ever  flourished  in 
Narragansett  since  the  day  of  Samuel  Gorton 
and  his  associates. 

One  of  these  weaver-preachers,  undis- 
mayed by  the  indifference  and  even  the  dis- 
approval of  his  neighbors,  built  a  rude  log 
pulpit  in  the  woods  near  his  home  and  there 
communed  aloud  with  God  if  not  with  man. 
The  sound  of  his  fervid  prayers  and  invoca- 
tions could  be  heard  afar  off  by  passers-by 


46  IN   OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

in  the  wood-lanes  and  roads,  even  in  mid- 
winter ;  while  the  emphasizing  thumps  of  his 
sturdy  fist  kept  his  blood  as  warm  as  his  re- 
ligion and  startled  the  Narragansett  squirrels 
and  chipmunks  who  thriftily  used  the  re- 
cesses of  the  weaver's  pulpit  as  a  storage- 
place  for  nuts  and  acorns.  There  were  few 
women  weavers  among  them,  especially  for 
linen-weaving,  which  was  hard  work.  Oc- 
casionally some  sturdy  woman,  of  masculine 
muscle  and  endurance,  was  a  weaver. 

One  of  these  Narragansett  women-weavers 
was  a  witch.  She  would  sit  for  hours  bend- 
ing over  her  loom,  silent,  peering  into  it 
and  not  doing  a  single  row.  This  angered 
the  dames  for  whom  she  worked,  but  they 
said  nothing,  lest  they  get  her  ill-will.  Sud- 
denly she  would  sit  up  and  start  her  treadle  ; 
bang  !  bang  !  would  go  her  batten  as  fast  as 
corn  in  a  corn-popper  ;  and  at  night,  after 
she  had  gone  home,  when  her  piece  was  still 
set  in  the  loom,  the  family  would  waken  and 
hear  the  half-toned  clapping  of  the  loom, 
which  someone  was  running  softly  to  help 
the  witch  out  in  her  stint,  probably  the  old 
black  man.  So,  behold  !  at  the  end  of  the 
week  more  cloth  appeared  on  the  cloth- 
beam,  more  linen  was  ready  for  bleaching, 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  47 

and  more  rolls  of  carpet  were  woven  than 
could  be  turned  out  by  any  man-weaver  in 
the  province.  So  whether  it  was  hitching 
up  with  the  devil  or  not,  she  always  had 
employment  in  plenty;  and  her  fine  linen 
table-cloths  were  in  every  bridal  outfit,  and 
her  linen  web  used  in  many  a  shroud  through- 
out Narragansett. 

She  never  ate  with  the  family  of  her  em- 
ployer as  did  every  other  worker  in  house  or 
on  farm,  nor  was  it  evident  that  she  brought 
food  with  her.  The  minister  suspected  she 
ate  nocake,  which  she  could  easily  hide  in 
her  pockets.  She  never  asked  for  water, 
nor  cider,  nor  switchel,  nor  kill-devil,  nor 
had  anyone  ever  seen  her  drink.  Debby 
Nichols  once  saw  a  bumble-bee  fly  buzz- 
buzz  out  of  her  mouth  as  she  wove  in  the 
minister's  loom-loft.  But  the  minister  said 
it  was  only  a  hornet  flying  past  her — the 
garret  was  full  of  them.  But,  sure  enough, 
at  that  very  hour  Joe  Spink  fell  from  his 
horse  on  the  old  Pequot  trail  from  Wickford 
and  broke  his  leg.  Joe  said  a  big  bumble- 
bee stung  the  horse  on  the  nose  and  made 
him  rear  and  plunge.  Joe  had  had  high 
words  with  the  witch  over  some  metheglin 
he  had  tried  to  buy  from  her  the  previous 


48  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

week,  for  she  brewed  as  well  as  she  wove. 
The  minister  said  that  if  metheglin  had  been 
the  only  drink  Joe  ever  bought  he  wouldn't 
have  fallen  from  his  horse,  and  that  it  wasn't 
the  first  bee  Joe  had  had  in  his  bonnet. 

One  day  some  careless  darkies  in  a  kitchen 
set  on  fire  a  hank  of  tow  that  was  being 
hetchelled  by  the  chimney-side.  The  sud- 
den blaze  extended  to  a  row  of  freshly  ironed 
sheets,  then  to  a  wool- wheel,  and  soon  a 
dense  smoke  and  darting  flames  filled  the 
room.  All  ran  out  of  the  house,  some  for 
water,  some  for  buckets,  some  for  help,  and 
no  one  thought  of  the  witch  in  the  loom- 
loft.  The  bang  and  rattle  of  her  work 
made  her  ignorant  of  the  noise  and  com- 
motion below,  and  as  the  smoke  entered  the 
loft  she  thought,  "  But  that  chimney  do 
smoke  !  "  Finally  a  conviction  of  danger 
came  to  her  and  she  made  her  way  down 
the  loft-ladder  and  through  the  entry  with 
difficulty  to  the  open  air. 

"Where's  the  cat?"  was  her  abrupt 
greeting  to  the  shamefaced  folk  who  began 
to  apologize  spasmodically  for  their  neglect 
to  alarm  her.  "  I  saw  her  an  hour  ago  on 
the  spare  bed  in  the  fore  room  " — and  back 
into  the  house  rushed  the  witch,  to  return 


NARRAGANSETT  WEAVERS  49 

in  a  few  moments  with  Tabby  safely  in  her 
arms.  This  act  of  course  deserved  scant 
praise.  Everyone  murmured  that  there  was 
probably  some  good  reason  for  doing  it, 
that  everyone  knew  witches  and  cats  had 
close  relations,  that  the  house  didn't  burn 
down  anyway,  and  probably  she  knew  it 
wasn't  going  to. 

One  night  a  neighbor  met  her,  breathing 
heavily,  her  hand  at  her  side,  hobbling  halt- 
ingly homeward.  He  told  his  wife  he 
guessed  the  witch  was  pretty  sick.  She  told 
the  minister's  wife  that  the  witch  was  get- 
ting her  deserts.  The  latter  in  turn  told 
her  husband,  and  during  a  ministerial  visit 
the  next  day  he  discoursed  profitably  on  the 
probable  illness  and  the  unsanctified  life  of 
that  misguided  woman.  The  minister  sat 
long  in  the  front  room  sipping  sangaree,  but 
the  hard-working  little  tailoress  in  the  kitchen 
overheard  his  moralizing  and  his  story.  And 
when  goose  and  shears  were  laid  aside,  and 
her  day's  work  was  over,  she  hurried  through 
the  winter  gloaming,  across  the  ice-crusts 
of  three  fields,  to  the  witch's  door.  No 
light  shone  from  the  window,  either  of  evil 
or  domestic  significance;  but  the  tailoress 
pulled  the  latch -string  and  pushed  open  the 


50  IN  OLD   NARRAGANSETT 

door,  and  by  the  light  of  her  hand-lantern 
found  the  witch  in  the  chilled  house  cold 
and  dead. 

The  following  August  a  band  of  wonder- 
ing, marauding  boys,  with  alternate  hesita- 
tion and  bravado,  entered  the  tenantless 
house.  The  windows  had  all  been  broken 
by  missiles  thrown  by  witch-hating  passers- 
by,  and  the  spring  rains  and  summer  suns 
had  freely  entered  the  room.  And  lo  !  the 
witches  bed,  on  which  she  died — a  sack  full 
of  straw  of  mouse-barley,  with  occasional 
spikes  of  grain  attached — had  sprouted  and 
grown  through  the  coarse  hempen  bed-tick, 
and  was  as  green  and  flourishing  as  the  grass 
over  her  unmarked  grave. 


WHERE  THREE  TOWNS  MEET 


WHERE  THREE  TOWNS  MEET 

IN  the  heart  of  Narragansett  three  towns 
meet  at  a  cross-roads  ;  they  are  North  King- 
ston, South  Kingston,  and  Exeter.  It  is  a 
lonely  cross-roads,  even  in  days  of  summer, 
though  Weaver  Rose's  cheerful  home  is  near 
it ;  but  it  is  picturesque  and  beautiful  in  its 
extended  view,  its  overreach  of  splendid 
locust-trees,  and  the  tangle  of  wild  flowers 
fringing  the  roadside  and  rioting  along  the 
stone  walls.  There  is  no  monument  or  stone, 
nothing  to  mark  the  special  tradition  of  this 
corner,  as  Squaw  Rock  at  Indian  Corner, 
half  a  mile  farther  on  the  road,  a  sinister 
rock  with  dark,  blood-red  veins  and  splashes, 
a  rock  whereon  were  dashed  the  brains  of  a 
Narragansett  squaw  by  her  drunken  brave  of 
a  husband. 

This  cross-roads,  or  "corner,"  has  been 
the  scene  many  times  of  episodes  as  uncivil- 
ized, if  not  as  cruel,  as  the  one  that  immor- 
talized Squaw  Rock.  Here — a  spot  chosen 
either  through  fancy,  tradition,  or  even  rustic 
53 


54  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

fashion,  or  because  here  three  townships 
meet — have  taken  place  several  of  those  ab- 
surd bequests  of  barbaric  peoples  known  as 
shift-marriages. 

These  ungallant  and  extremely  inconven- 
ient ceremonies  are  not  American  inventions 
or  Yankee  notions,  but  an  old  English 
custom,  being  in  brief  the  marriage  of  a 
woman,  usually  a  widow,  clad  only  in  her 
shift,  to  avoid  hampering  her  newly  made 
husband  with  her  old  debts.  All  through 
New  England,  in  New  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania, this  custom  was  known  until  this 
century.  In  Narragansett  it  was  compara- 
tively common.  The  exact  form  of  the 
sacrifice  (for  sacrifice  it  was  of  modesty  to 
the  new  husband's  cupidity)  and  notions 
about  it  varied  in  localities.  Let  me  give  a 
marriage-certificate  of  a  shift-marriage  which 
took  place  on  this  very  cross-roads  where  the 
three  towns  meet : 

"  On  March  nth,  1717,  did  Philip  Shearman  Take 
the  Widow  Hannah  Clarke  in  her  Shift,  without  any 
other  Apparel,  and  led  her  across  the  Highway,  as 
the  Law  directs  in  such  Cases  and  was  then  married 
according  to  law  by  me.  WILLIAM  HALL,  Justice." 

It  is  not  specified  in  this  certificate  that 
this  grotesque  proceeding  took  place  at  night, 


WH£RE  THREE  TOWNS  MEET  55 

but,  out  of  some  regard  for  decency,  and  to 
avoid  notoriety,  such  was  usually  the  case. 

There  is  an  ancient  registration  book  of 
births,  deaths,  and  marriages  at  the  handsome 
new  Town  Hall  at  South  Kingston,  R.  I. 
There  is  an  entry  within  it  of  a  shift-mar- 
riage : 

"Thomas  Calverwell  was  joyned  in  marriage  to 
Abigail  Calverwell  his  wife  the  22.  February,  1719- 
20.  He  took  her  in  marriage  after  she  had  gone  four 
times  across  the  highway  in  only  her  shift  and  hair- 
lace  and  no  other  clothing.  Joyned  together  in 
marriage  by  me. 

"  GEORGE  HAZARD,  Justice." 

This  was  but  two  years  after  the  marriage 
of  Widow  Clarke,  and  the  public  parade 
may  have  taken  place  on  the  same  spot,  but 
there  is  a  slight  variation,  in  that  the  fair 
Abigail's  ordeal  was  prolonged  to  four  times 
crossing  the  road.  The  naming  of  the  hair- 
lace  seems  trivial  and  superfluous  with  such 
other  complete  disrobing,  but  it  was  more 
significant  than  may  appear  to  a  careless 
reader.  At  that  date  women  wore  caps  even 
in  early  girlhood,  and  were  never  seen  in 
public  without  them.  To  be  capless  indi- 
cated complete  dishabille.  A  court  record 
still  exists  wherein  is  an  entry  of  a  great  in- 


56  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

suit  offered  to  the  town  constables  by  an  an- 
gry and  contemptuous  woman.  She  threat- 
ened to  pull  off  her  head-gear  and  go  before 
them,  "  only  in  her  hair-lace  and  hair,  like 
a  parcel  of  pitiful,  beggarly  curs  that  they 
were."  So  the  abandon  of  only  a  hair- 
lace  comported  well  with  Abigail  Calver- 
well's  only  a  shift. 

Hopkinton  is  another  Narragansett  town, 
in  the  same  county.  In  1780  David  Lewis 
married  at  Hopkinton,  Widow  Jemima  Hill, 
"  where  four  roads  meet,"  at  midnight,  she 
being  dressed  only  in  her  shift.  This  was 
to  avoid  payment  of  Husband  Hill's  debts. 
Ten  years  later,  in  a  neighboring  town,  Rich- 
mond, still  in  the  South  County,  Widow 
Sarah  Collins  appeared  in  the  twilight  in  a 
long  shift,  a  special  wedding-shift  covering 
her  to  her  feet,  and  was  then  and  thus  mar- 
ried to  Thomas  Ken  yon. 

Westerly,  still  in  the  same  Narragansett 
county,  had  the  same  custom  and  the  same 
belief. 

"  To  all  People  whom  It  May  Concern.  This  Cer- 
tifies that  Nathanell  Bundy  of  Westerly  took  ye 
Widdow  Mary  Parmenter  of  sd  town  on  ye  highway 
with  no  other  clothing  but  shifting  or  smock  on  ye 
Evening  of  ye  20  day  of  Aprill,  1724,  and  was  joined 


WHERE  THREE  TOWNS  MEET          57 

together  in  that  honorable  Estate  of  matrimony  in  ye 
presence  of  JOHN  SANDERS,  Justice. 

'JOHN  COREY. 

1  GEORGE  COREY. 

'  MARY  HILL. 

1  PETER  CRANDALL. 

4  MARY  CRANDALL." 

The  use  of  the  word  smock  here  recalls  the 
fact  that  in  England  these  marriages  were 
always  called  smock- marriages. 

The  Swedish  traveller,  Kalm,  writing  in 
1748,  tells  of  one  Pennsylvania  bridegroom 
who  saved  appearances  by  meeting  the  scan- 
tily clad  widow  half-way  from  her  house  to 
his  own,  and  announcing  formally  that  the 
wedding-garments  which  he  thereupon  pre- 
sented to  her  were  not  given  to  her  but  were 
only  lent  to  her  for  this  occasion.  This  is 
much  like  the  ancient  custom  of  marriage  in- 
vestiture, still  in  existence  in  Eastern  Hin- 
dostan. 

Another  husband  who  thus  formally  lent 
wedding-garments  to  a  widow-bride  was 
Major  Moses  Joy,  who  married  Widow  Han- 
nah Ward  in  Newfane,  Vt.,  in  1789.  The 
widow  stood  in  her  shift,  within  a  closet,  and 
held  out  her  hand  through  a  diamond-shaped 
hole  in  the  door  to  the  Major,  who  had  gal- 


58  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

lantly  deposited  the  garments  for  Madam  to 
don  before  appearing  as  a  bride.  In  Ver- 
mont many  similar  marriages  are  recorded, 
the  bride  not  being  required  to  cross  the 
highway.  One  of  these  unclad  brides  left 
the  room  by  a  window,  and  dressed  on  the 
upper  rounds  of  a  ladder,  a  somewhat  difficult 
feat  even  for  a  ll  lightning-change  artist." 
In  Maine  the  custom  also  prevailed.  One 
half-frozen  bride,  on  a  winter's  night  in  Feb- 
ruary, was  saved  for  a  long  and  happy  life  by 
having  the  pitying  minister,  who  was  about 
to  marry  her,  throw  a  coat  over  her  as  she 
stood  in  her  shift  on  the  king's  highway. 
In  early  New  York,  in  Holland,  in  ancient 
Rhynland,  this  avoidance  of  debt-paying 
was  accomplished  in  less  annoying  fashion 
by  a  widow's  appearing  in  borrowed  clothing 
at  her  husband's  funeral,  or  laying  a  straw  or 
key  on  the  coffin  and  kicking  it  off. 

The  traveller,  Gustavus  Vasa,  records  a 
shift  marriage  which  he  saw  in  New  York  in 
1784.  A  woman,  clad  only  in  her  shift,  ap- 
peared at  the  gallows  just  as  an  execution 
was  about  to  take  place,  demanded  the  life 
of  the  criminal,  and  was  then  and  there 
married  to  him.  It  is  well  known  that  in 
England  criminals  sentenced  to  death  (usu- 


WHERE  THREE   TOWNS  MEET  59 

ally  for  political  offences)  were  rescued  from 
the  gallows  by  the  appearance  at  the  time 
and  place  of  execution  of  women  who 
claimed  the  right  of  marrying  them,  and 
thus  saving  their  lives. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  these  shift-mar- 
riages were  but  an  ignorant  folk-custom,  and 
that  there  never  was  any  law  or  reason  for 
the  belief  that  the  observance  procured  im- 
munity from  payment  of  past  debts.  But  it 
is  plainly  stated  in  many  of  these  Narragan- 
sett  certificates  that  it  was  "  according  to  the 
law  in  such  cases."  The  marriages  were 
certainly  degrading  in  character,  and  were 
gone  through  with  only  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  debt  evasion,  and  they  must  have 
been  successful.  The  chief  actors  in  these 
Narragansett  comedies  were,  from  scant  neg- 
ative testimony  of  their  life  and  the  social 
position  of  their  families,  not  necessarily  of 
limited  means.  Any  man  of  wealth  might 
not,  however,  wish  to  pay  the  debts  of  his 
matrimonial  "predecessor,"  as  the  first  hus- 
band is  termed  in  one  case. 

And  it  should  be  remembered  also  that  at 
the  time  these  weddings  took  place  there  was 
nothing  boorish  in  the  community.  Con- 
sidering the  necessary  differences  in  the  cen- 


60  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

turies,  the  " South  County"  was  not  nearly 
as  "countrified,"  to  use  a  conventional  term, 
then  as  now.  Exeter  has  ever  been  sparsely 
settled,  with  many  woodlands,  meagre  farms, 
and  little  wealth,  though  it  had  one  church 
with  a  thousand  members;  but  North  King- 
ston had  a  thrifty  and  enterprising  general 
population,  with  many  men  of  wealth,  and 
handsome  houses.  South  Kingston,  the  nearest 
town-centre  to  the  cross-roads,  was  settled 
by  men  of  opulence  and  of  polite  culture.  It 
was  the  richest  town  in  the  State  of  Rhode 
Island,  paying,  as  late  as  1780,  double  the 
taxes  assigned  to  Newport  and  one-third  more 
than  Providence.  The  cross-roads,  where  the 
three  towns  meet,  was  not  far  from  St.  Paul's 
Church,  where  the  planters  and  their  families 
gathered  each  Sunday,  riding  to  it  over  the 
very  highway  where  the  shift-marriages  took 
place. 

As  I  sat  on  a  fallen  tree  last  summer  at  the 
lonely  cross-roads,  the  scene  of  so  many  of 
these  shift-marriages,  the  place,  with  its  fairly 
tropical  bloom,  seemed  a  romantic  spot  for 
such  a  grotesquery ;  but  the  picture  of  the 
last  of  these  benumbed  brides,  who,  early  in 
this  century,  clad  only  in  a  linen  shift,  on 
a  February  night — a  New  England  Febru~ 


WHERE   THREE  TOWNS  MEET          61 

ary  night — shivered  across  the  frozen  road  to 
avoid  the  payment  of  some  paltry  debt,  and 
the  thought  of  the  unspeakable  husband  who 
would  let  her  go  through  such  a  mortifying 
and  distressing  ordeal,  there  seemed  scant  ro- 
mance, and  nothing  but  ignorant  and  sordid 
superstition. 


TUGGIE   BANNOCKS'S   MOONACK 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS'S  MOONACK 

TUGGIE  BANNOCKS,  the  Narragansett  ne- 
gress,  decided  to  work  a  charm  on  old  Bosum 
Sidet,  the  negro  tinker.  She  was  not  going 
to  charm  him  in  the  ordinary  commonplace 
way,  albeit  pleasing,  that  most  dames  follow 
— be  they  old  or  young,  black  or  white — to 
allure  human  beings  of  the  opposite  sex. 
Her  charm  was,  alas,  a  malignant  one,  a 
"conjure,"  that  she  angrily  decided  to  work 
upon  him  as  a  revenge  for  his  clumsy  and 
needless  destruction  of  her  best  copper  tea- 
kettle while  he  was  attempting,  or  I  suspect 
pretending,  to  repair  it.  This  charm  was  not 
a  matter  of  a  moment's  hasty  decision  and 
careless  action ;  it  required  some  minute  and 
varied  preparation  and  considerable  skill  to 
carry  it  out  successfully,  and  work  due  and 
desired  evil. 

Tuggie's  first  step,  literally,  was  to  walk 

over  the  snowy  fields,  the  frozen  roads,  to 

Bosum's  house  to  obtain  some  twigs  or  sprigs 

of  withered  grass  that  had  grown  and  still 

65 


66  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

lingered  in  his  dooryard.  Lest  Bosum's  wife 
should  suspect  any  uncanny  motive  for  her 
visit,  she  carefully  elaborated  a  plan,  and  car- 
ried on,  in  its  furtherance,  a  long  conversation 
with  regard  to  a  certain  coveted  dye-stuff 
which  Mother  Sidet  manufactured ;  it  turned 
all  woollen  stuffs  a  vivid  green,  and  was  in 
much  demand  throughout  Narragansett  to 
dye  old  woollen  rags  and  worn-out  flannel 
sheets  and  shirts  this  brilliant,  verdant  hue, 
when  thqy  could  thereafter  be  used  to  most 
astonishing  and  satisfactory  advantage  in 
conferring  variety  in  the  manufacture  of  those 
triumphs  of  decorative  art,  those  outlets  of 
rural  color-sense,  home-made  woven  rag-car- 
pets, and  hooked  and  braided  rugs.  Tuggie 
argued  with  much  dignity  and  volubility  that 
she  should  be  told  the  secret  of  this  dye-stuff 
as  some  slight  compensation  for  her  ruined 
tea-kettle.  It  is  needless  to  state  that  she 
was  unsuccessful,  nor  had  she  expected  to  be 
otherwise.  The  secret  of  the  dye  was  Molly 
Sidet's  stock-in-trade,  just  as  the  soldering- 
iron  and  solder  were  her  husband's. 

At  Molly's  refusal  Tuggie  waxed  wroth, 
and  a  most  unpleasant  exchange  of  personal- 
ities took  place,  which  culminated  in  Tug- 
gie1 s  exasperating  reference  to  an  event 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS'S  MOONACK       67 

which  had  occurred  in  Bosum's  youth,  and 
about  which  he  and  his  wife  were  exceeding- 
ly and  naturally  sensitive.  He  had  once 
gone  proudly  to  Boston  for  a  three  months' 
visit  to  ply  his  trade  and  see  the  town.  At 
the  end  of  two  weeks  he  had  reappeared  in 
Narragansett,  kit  in  hand  and  depressed  in 
appearance.  When  interrogated  as  to  the 
reason  of  his  sudden  and  speedy  return,  he 
had  answered,  acrimoniously,  that  "  Boston 
folks  is  too  full  of  notions."  In  the  course 
of  a  few  weeks,  however,  news  came  to  Nar- 
ragansett that  Bosum  had  been  arrested  in 
Boston  for  his  well-known  trick  of  stealing, 
and  had  been  whipped  through  the  town  at 
the  cart-tail.  Nothing  could  anger  Molly 
Sidet  more  than  a  reference  to  "  Boston  no- 
tions." Tuggie  used  this  thorn  in  the  side 
with  well-planned  judiciousness  and  with  the 
pleasing  and  wholly  satisfactory  result  that 
Molly  ordered  her  fiercely  out  of  the  house. 
This  was  precisely  what  she  desired,  for  a 
witch  cannot  work  a  full,  a  thoroughly  suc- 
cessful conjure  on  one  who  has  always  treated 
her  well  and  kindly,  and  shown  her  due  hos- 
pitality; hence  old  Tuggie,  by  Molly's  abrupt 
expulsion  of  her  from  her  house,  was  left  free 
to  work  her  wicked  will. 


68  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

Though  Tuggie  did  not  get  the  coveted 
dye-stuff,  nor  the  recipe  therefor,  she  did 
not  return  home  empty-handed ;  she  man- 
aged to  pick  without  discovery  a  few  leafless 
twigs  from  the  great  bush  of  southernwood 
that  grew  by  the  stone  doorstep  of  Bosum 
Sidet's  house,  and  she  felt  that  her  visit  had 
not  been  in  vain.  Fortune  favored  her.  As 
she  passed  the  door  of  the  tinker's  barn  she 
slipped  in  unobserved  and  clipped  a  few 
hairs  from  the  tail  of  his  cow.  It  would  have 
been  much  better,  much  surer,  to  have  had 
these  hairs  from  Bosum's  own  head,  but  to 
aspire  to  a  fibre  of  his  close-cropped  wool 
was  useless. 

As  Tuggie  Bannocks  walked  home  over  the 
crisp  snow  she  muttered  to  herself  with  de- 
light, and  she  glowered  and  scowled  at  the 
children  as  she  passed  the  school-house  at 
the  corner,  and  they  hooted  and  jeered  at 
her  in  return,  and  called  out,  "  Te-Rap,  Te- 
Rap,"  which  everyone  knows  is  the  greeting 
that  witches  cry  out  to  each  other. 

She  certainly  was  deemed  a  witch  by  her 
neighbors  as  well  as  the  children.  And  this 
reputation  was  not  accidental,  it  was  jealous- 
ly cultivated.  She  conformed  her  mien  and 
behavior  to  all  that  was  expected  of  a  witch  ; 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS'S  MOONACK       69 

and  she  had  been  gifted  by  nature  with  one 
feature  which,  much  to  her  satisfaction,  en- 
abled her  to  exhibit  convincing  proofs  of  her 
pretensions.  She  had  two  full  rows  of  double 
teeth  (front  teeth  and  all  were  double),  which 
could  be  displayed  to  telling  and  bewilder- 
ing advantage  to  those  who  thought  her 
"just  like  other  folks." 

She  did  have  some  uncanny  habits ;  some 
that,  a  century  previous,  in  a  Puritan  commu- 
nity, would  have  set  her  afloat  to  sink  or  swim. 

She  never  sat  upon  stool  or  chair  or  settle 
in  anyone's  house ;  no  one  had  ever  seen  her 
seated  save  on  a  table  or  dresser  or  bed,  or 
even  on  a  cradle-head — this  to  the  painful 
apprehension  of  the  mother  who  owned  the 
cradle.  When  spinning  flax  in  one  house 
she  sat  on  a  saw-horse.  She  had  not  a  chair 
in  her  house,  but  there  was  an  oaken  chair- 
moulding  at  the  top  of  the  wainscoting  in 
her  spacious  old  kitchen  ;  and  it  was  cur- 
rently reported  and  believed  that  when  she 
was  alone  she  perched  or  clung  with  her 
heels  on  this  moulding.  The  Newport  chap- 
man, Chepa  Rose,  told  at  the  Ferry  that  he 
saw  her  one  night  running  round  the  room 
on  the  moulding.  But  Chepa  was  not  truth- 
ful, so  I  do  not  believe  it. 


70  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

Tuggie  dwelt  alone  in  the  ell  part  of  an  old 
gambrel-roofed  house,  which  had  seen  better 
days,  but  was  now  deserted  and  sadly  dilapi- 
dated, and  was  indeed  in  its  main  portion 
almost  roofless.  The  ell,  which  contained 
the  great  raftered  kitchen  and  two  other 
rooms,  was,  however,  tight  and  comfortable, 
and  made  a  cheerful,  picturesque  home.  Tug- 
gie, who  was  strong  and  capable,  worked  for 
the  farmers'  wives  around ;  dipped  candles, 
made  soap,  spun  yarn  and  wove  carpets, 
brewed  and  salted ;  she  also  cultivated  a  lit- 
tle patch  of  land  of  her  own,  and  knit  stock- 
ings to  sell,  and  was  altogether  a  very  thrifty, 
industrious  person.  She  was  in  reality  far 
more  afraid  of  being  bewitched  than  she  was 
confident  of  bewitching,  and  that  evening, 
as  she  prepared  to  "  burn  a  project "  to  con- 
jure old  Bosum  Sidet,  she  started  at  every 
sound,  and  turned  her  petticoats  inside  out, 
to  keep  off  evil  spirits,  and  at  last  hung  a  bag 
of  egg-shells  around  her  neck  as  a  potent 
saving-charm. 

She  first  mixed  a  little  flour  and  water 
into  dough  and  stirred  in  the  hairs  from  the 
cow's  tail  —  these  were  the  straw  for  her 
brick ;  then  she  moulded  the  dough  into  the 
shape  of  a  heart  and  stuck  two  pins  in  for 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS'S  MOONACK        71 

legs  and  two  for  arms ;  this  would  surely  give 
Bosum  "misery  in  de  legs  and  arms" — in 
short,  rheumatism.  This  dough-heart  she 
set  aside,  for  it  was  not  properly  part  of 
the  project,  and  would  only  fulfil  its  diaboli- 
cal mission  when  it  was  carried  to  Bosum's 
door  and  set  upon  his  fence  or  door-step, 
when  the  "  misery"  would  begin. 

She  then,  with  rather  a  quaking  heart, 
prepared  to  burn  the  project.  The  sprigs  of 
southernwood  from  Bosum's  door-yard,  a  few 
rusty  nails,  the  tail  of  a  smoked  herring,  a 
scrap  of  red  flannel,  a  little  mass  of  "grave- 
dirt  ' '  that  she  had  taken  from  one  of  the 
many  graveyards  that  are  dotted  all  over 
Narragansett,  and,  last  of  all,  that  chief  in- 
gredient, the  prime  factor  in  all  negro  charms 
— a  rabbit's  foot — were  thrown  into  a  pot 
of  water  that  was  hung  upon  the  crane  over 
a  roaring  fire.  Of  course  everyone  in  Narra- 
gansett knew  that  when  a  project  began  to 
boil  the  conjured  one  would  begin  to  suffer 
some  mental  or  bodily  ill;  hence  Tuggie 
listened  with  much  satisfaction  to  the  pre- 
monitory bubbling  within  the  pot. 

She  stepped  into  the  centre  of  the  room  on 
account  of  the  heat  of  the  fire,  and  because 
it  is  not  good  luck  to  watch  a  boiling  proj- 


72  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ectj  and  as  she  stood  in  the  red  glow  of 
the  firelight  she  was  the  personification  of 
negro  superstition.  Tall  and  gaunt,  with 
long  bony  arms,  and  skinny  claws  of  hands, 
with  a  wrinkled,  malicious,  yet  half-fright- 
ened countenance,  surrounded  by  little  pig- 
tails of  gray  wool  that  stuck  out  from  under 
her  scarlet  turban,  with  her  old  petticoat 
turned  inside  out,  and  a  gay  little  shawl 
pinned  on  her  shoulders,  she  stood  like  a 
Voodoo  priestess  eagerly  watching  and  lis- 
tening. When  the  boiling  fairly  began,  she 
commenced  swaying,  rocking  herself  back- 
ward and  forward,  patting  the  floor  with 
heavy  foot,  almost  dancing  while  she  mut- 
tered and  sung,  in  a  low  voice,  a  few  gib- 
berish charms  that  had  been  taught  by  her 
mother,  Queen  Abigail.  She  rolled  her  eyes 
up  in  a  superstitious  ecstasy,  and  swung  her 
long  arms  to  the  rhythm  of  her  heathenish 
song,  when  suddenly  a  shock  like  an  earth- 
quake struck  her  door;  it  flew  violently 
open,  and  some  long,  heavy  object  rushed 
in,  struck  Tuggie  violently  on  her  tender 
shins,  and  threw  her,  face  downward,  on  the 
floor.  She  was  for  a  moment  stunned  with 
the  fall  and  with  the  suddenness  of  the  as- 
sault, but  when  she  regained  her  senses  she 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS'S  MOONACK        73 

still  lay  on  the  floor  with  eyes  tightly  closed 
and  her  face  covered  with  her  hands,  for 
this  violent  assailant  was  surely  that  terrifying 
creature,  a  "  moonack,"  that  she  had  raised 
and  brought  by  her  wicked  conjuring,  and 
if  she  glanced  at  it,  it  would  cause  her  in- 
stant death. 

Perfect  stillness  had  succeeded  the  assault. 
The  old  negress  groaned  and  tried  to  pray. 
She  repeated  some  old  Voodoo  charms,  the 
Creed,  all  kinds  of  words  to  ward  off  evil 
spirits,  and  at  last  pleaded  aloud,  "Oh,  Mass' 
Debbil,  you  only  lets  me  go  dis  time,  I  won't 
nebber  burn  no  projects  no  more  ;  I  warn't 
a-goin'  to  hurt  Bosum  anyway,  I  only  wants 
to  git  a  new  tea-kettle  outen  him.  I'll  frow 
de  project  out,  and  burn  up  de  dough-baby, 
an'  lug  back  dat  wool  I  stole  from  Debby 
Nickkels,  an'  I  won't  nebber  purtend  I'se  a 
witch  agin.  Oh  !  Mass'  Moonack  !  Don't 
take  me  dis  time."  At  this  juncture  she 
again  became  speechless  with  terror,  for 
she  heard  soft,  irregular  footsteps  entering 
the  door.  She  groaned  and  moaned,  but 
did  not  open  her  eyes. 

Four  pale  and  staring  boys,  Tom  and 
Jeffrey  Hazard,  Zeke  Gardiner,  and  Pel 
Noyes,  stole  softly  in  on  tiptoe,  caught  hold  of 


74  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

the  clumsy  caricature  of  a  bob-sled  that  had  so 
fiercely  assaulted  Tuggie's  shins  and  knocked 
her  down,  dragged  it  out  of  the  house  and 
disappeared  with  it  down  the  road.  Jeffrey 
Hazard,  who  had  in  him  throughout  his 
entire  life  a  far  more  active  and  real  devil 
than  any  evil  spirit  that  Tuggie  conjured  or 
dreamed  of,  could  not  resist,  ere  he  left  the 
house,  catching  the  old  woman  by  the  foot 
as  he  passed  her  and  pulling  her  as  if  to  take 
her  off  with  him,  until  her  groans  of  fright 
made  him  desist. 

Old  Tuggie  listened  to  the  light  footsteps 
and  the  dragging  noise  in  agony.  With 
close-shut  eyes  she  listened  to  the  steps  of  the 
devils  and  moonacks  as  they  gradually  went 
away  from  the  house.  The  cold,  icy  night- 
air  blew  in  upon  her  as  she  lay  on  the  floor, 
the  water  burned  down  in  the  pot,  and  a 
nauseous  odor  of  burning  fish  and  flesh  filled 
the  house.  At  last  she  tremblingly  arose, 
closed  the  door,  swung  the  pot  off  the  fire, 
seized  a  horseshoe  and  prayer-book,  and  went 
to  bed. 

The  week  previous  Pel  Noyes  had  been  to 
Boston,  and  had  returned  with  his  brain  and 
tongue  full  of  a  fine  sled  for  coasting  that  he 
had  seen  in  that  great  metropolis.  With 


TUGGIE  BANNOCKS' S  MOONACK        75 

four  old  sleigh-runners  and  a  few  boards  he 
had  rigged  an  imitation  of  the  beautiful 
' '  double-runner, ' '  and  the  four  boys  sallied 
out  that  winter  night  to  use  and  enjoy  it. 
They  intended  to  skim  past  Witch  Tuggie's 
door  with  a  shrill  and  annoying  shriek  of  de- 
fiance, but  alas  !  their  clumsy  steering-ap- 
paratus broke  when  they  were  half-way  down 
the  hill,  and  the  contrary  sled,  rudderless 
and  uncontrolled,  instead  of  gliding  past  the 
witch's  door  banged  into  it,  with  the  full 
success  that  we  know.  The  boys  were  thrown 
into  the  snow  outside  the  door,  and  their 
first  impulse  was  to  abandon  their  newly 
manufactured  sled  and  run  for  their  lives; 
but  they  were  quick  to  discover,  from  manner 
and  word,  that  Tuggie  was  more  frightened 
than  they  were,  and  they  stole  in  softly  and 
rescued  the  sled  out  of  the  very  witch's  den. 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN 

ON  a  bright  June  morning  in  the  year 
1811,  old  Cuddymonk  sat  in  the  cheerful 
sunlight  at  the  open  door  of  his  house,  on 
the  banks  of  Lake  Petaquamscut,  in  old 
Narragansett.  Cuddymonk  was  a  negro ; 
but  a  Narragansett  negro  was,  at  that  date, 
of  almost  another  race  than  a  Southern 
negro.  He  was  free ;  he  was  usually  re- 
spected and  self-respecting;  he  might,  and 
often  did,  own  a  house  and  farm  of  his  own ; 
and  he  had  a  certain  independent  social  po- 
sition which  was  far  from  being  a  despised 
one,  for  he  enjoyed,  with  his  rich  white 
neighbors,  who  had  been  slave-owners,  a 
friendly  intimacy  that  was  denied  to  a  poor 
white  man.  He  was,  however,  somewhat 
lazy,  occasionally  untruthful,  and  even  dis- 
honest— like  his  Southern  colored  brother. 
Cuddymonk  was  a  typical  Narragansett 
negro — sharp,  shrewd,  and  in  the  main 
thrifty.  He  was  deeply  and  consistently 
79 


8o  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

superstitious,  and  knew  a  thousand  tales  of 
ghosts  and  spirits  and  witches  and  Manitous, 
old  traditions  of  African  Voodooism  and  Ind- 
ian pow-wows.  He  was  profoundly  learned 
in  the  meaning  of  dreams  and  omens  and 
predictions,  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  prac- 
tise— or  attempt  to  practise — all  kinds  of 
witch-charms  and  "  conjures  "  and  "proj- 
ects," though  he  was  a  member  in  good 
standing,  as  he  proudly  stated,  of  "  de  Pisti- 
kle  Church." 

He  was  a  good  cobbler,  a  fair  tinker,  a 
poor  mason,  a  worse  carpenter,  a  first-class 
fisherman.  He  worked  at  any  and  all  of 
these  trades  with  cheerful  and  indolent  im- 
partiality, just  as  he  fiddled,  and  sheared 
sheep,  and  ploughed,  and  sowed,  and  raked, 
and  harvested  for  his  rich  white  neighbors ; 
but  when  anyone  asked  him  his  real  trade, 
he  proudly  answered,  "  I's  er  pollertishun." 

He  was  indeed  a  politician,  for  he  had 
held  the  highest  political  position  that  his 
State  and  race  afforded  :  he  had  thrice  been 
elected  "Black  Gov'nor  "  of  Narragansett 
on  "Nigger  'Lection  Day" — not  on  ac- 
count of  his  master's  great  wealth  and  high 
position,  as  was  in  slavery  times  "  Gov'nor  " 
Aaron  Potter;  not  for  his  military  prowess. 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  81 

as  was  "  Gov'nor  "  Guy  Watson,  who  had 
served  bravely  at  Ticonderoga  and  at  the 
absurd  capture  of  General  Prescott ;  not,  as 
was  "  Gov'nor  "  Prince  Robinson,  for  his 
handsome  person  and  stately  appearance, 
for  poor  Cuddy  possessed  neither.  He  had 
been  elected  just  as  white  governors  frequent- 
ly are  elected  nowadays — because  he  was  a 
politician.  His  office,  however,  bore  no 
salary  and  but  few  emoluments  ;  but  it  con- 
ferred great  honor  and  dignity,  and  through 
it  he  received  many  small  favors.  He  was 
consulted  as  to  the  settlement  of  many  petty 
disputes  among  his  black  brothers,  and  his 
decision  was  law.  His  office  thus  had  a  cer- 
tain power,  and  commanded  some  respect 
among  the  white  people,  who  through  him 
could  obtain  small  settlements  and  adjust- 
ments, and  arrange  many  matters  in  their 
relations  with  the  negroes,  without  the 
trouble  of  personal  effort.  Cuddy  had  the 
honor  of  having  many  of  his  legal  decisions 
and  political  aphorisms  and  his  abstruse 
financial  opinions  quoted  at  the  white  Gov- 
ernor's table,  where  they  had  been  received 
with  much  laughter,  and  some  praise,  also, 
for  their  shrewdness. 

His  election  had  been  a  scene  of  great  fes- 


82  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

tivity.  On  the  third  Saturday  in  June  (on 
which  Nigger  'Lection  was  always  held) 
there  gathered  in  the  great  oak  grove  on 
Rose  Hill  the  black  inhabitants,  riding  on 
saddles  and  pillions,  in  chaises  and  farm- 
wagons,  in  ox-carts  even — men,  women,  and 
children — all  in  their  gayest  and  finest  attire, 
from  all  the  towns  around.  At  ten  o'clock 
the  canvass  commenced.  Weeks  of  "  'lec- 
tureneerin'  and  parmenteerin'  "  had  roused 
great  interest  in  the  event,  and  at  last  the 
two  rows  of  the  male  friends  of  the  respective 
candidates  were  arranged  in  lines  under  the 
trees  in  the  charge  of  two  pompous  marshals, 
while  the  women  stood  admiringly  around. 
Cuddymonk,  mounted  on  Colonel  Gardiner's 
gray  horse,  and  wearing  a  fine  coat  and  knee- 
breeches  that  had  been  given  him  by  the 
colonel,  with  a  great  borrowed  gold-laced 
cocked  hat  balanced  on  the  back  of  his  head, 
rode  up  and  down  the  line  flourishing  a  long 
sword  that  had  been  lent  him  for  the  occa- 
sion. And  he  kept  quiet  and  order,  that  no 
one  might  change  ranks  after  the  counting 
began,  or  step  from  one  end  of  the  line  to 
the  other,  and  thus  fraudulently  increase  the 
number  of  votes.  When  the  counting  was 
done  the  number  of  votes  and  successful 


A  BLACK  POLITIQAN  83 

candidate  was  announced.  Cuddymonk's 
election  was  received  with  tumultuous  cheers 
and  congratulations. 

Only  one  event  occurred  to  mar  the  dig- 
nity of  this  first  election.  As  he  was  about 
to  end  his  inauguration  address  with  a  glo- 
rious flourish  and  climax  of  ornate  rhetoric, 
his  defeated  opponent  called  out,  in  a  high, 
malicious  voice,  "  Cuddy,  yer  calfs  has  got 
round  in  front !  "  Cuddy  glanced  down  at 
his  legs  with  apprehensive  mortification. 
Alas  !  it  was  too  true.  Colonel  Gardiner 
had  given  with  the  knee-breeches  a  pair  of 
his  fine  long  stockings  :  but  as  he  was  as 
sturdy  and  muscular  as  Cuddy  was  thin,  and 
as  the  politician  had  even  more  "negative 
calf  and  convex  shin  ' '  (as  said  Randolph  of 
Virginia)  than  have  most  of  his  race,  the 
colonel's  stockings  hung  in  unsightly  folds ; 
that  Cuddy's  wife,  Rosann,  remedied  by 
thrusting  into  each  stocking-leg  a  great  roll 
of  sheep's  wool.  In  the  heat  of  "  parmen- 
teerin' , ' '  and  through  constant  friction  against 
his  horse's  sides,  Cuddy's  woollen  calves  had 
indeed  "  got  round  in  front."  In  vain  did 
he  try,  amid  the  jeers  of  his  opponents,  to  re- 
place the  unsightly  wads  in  a  dignified  and 
proper  position  ;  they  refused  to  stay  placed, 


84  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

and  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  at  the  dinner 
and  at  the  dance,  the  false  calves  hung  in 
front  of  and  under  his  sharp  old  knees,  look- 
ing for  all  the  world,  in  the  gray,  wrinkled 
stockings,  like  a  pair  of  hornets'  nests  under 
the  eaves  of  a  house. 

It  may  plainly  be  seen  that  by  virtue  of 
his  position  old  Cuddymonk  was  of  the  high 
aristocracy  of  Narragansett  black  society. 
He  was  also  an  aristocrat  by  birth.  The 
blood  of  African  kings  rah  in  his  veins,  and 
a  strong  cross  of  Indian  blood,  that  of  old 
King  Ninigret,  showed  in  his  high  cheek- 
bones and  coarse  black  hair.  His  skin, 
too,  was  far  from  black.  As  he  sat  in  the 
clear  sunlight  on  this  May  morning,  his  bare 
feet  and  hands  and  face  were  of  a  uniform 
glowing  golden-brown  color,  as  rich  and 
cheerful,  though  not  as  orange-tinted,  as  a 
ripe  pumpkin.  The  appearance  of  his  head 
was,  also,  most  unlike  the  wool-covered, 
low-browed,  heavy-jawed  cranium  of  a  ne- 
gro ;  for  his  half-curly,  coarse  hair  grew  on 
the  back  part  of  his  head  only,  and  stuck 
out  in  a  great  stiff,  surrounding  halo.  The 
top  and  sides  of  his  head  being  thus  left 
bare  gave  to  him  the  appearance  of  having 
an  extraordinarily  high  and  brain-developed 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  85 

forehead;  and  altogether  these  peculiarities 
caused  him  to  bear  a  comical  cranial  resem- 
blance both  to  the  noble  Shakespeare  and 
a  blue-haired,  ring-crowned  baboon.  His 
teeth  and  eyeballs  showed  the  brilliant,  glit- 
tering white  of  the  negro,  not  at  all  like  the 
dingy  black  snags  and  reddish,  inflamed  eye- 
balls seen  in  the  Indian.  He  wore  a  collar- 
less  and  rather  ragged  white  shirt,  an  ancient 
and  much-worn  long-tailed  blue  coat  with 
brass  buttons,  the  very  coat  which  had  been 
given  to  him  by  Colonel  Gardiner  to  attire 
him  fitly  and  gloriously  upon  his  election 
as  "Gov'nor."  But  the  garment  having 
served  through  three  terms  of  office  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  many  years  it  had  faithfully 
covered  the  colonel's  back),  was  now  de- 
graded to  every-day  wear.  Cuddy  was  also 
clad  in  a  shapeless  pair  of  loose  yellowish 
tow  trousers  called  "  tongs,"  that  bore  strong 
evidence  not  only  of  home  spinning  and 
weaving,  but  of  home  tailoring  as  well,  if 
such  unsightly  great  linen  bags  could  be  said 
to  be  tailored. 

Cuddy  regarded  with  much  satisfaction  a 
row  of  dilapidated  beehives  that  stood  by  his 
door,  whose  busy  inhabitants  furnished  to 
him  the  toothsome  honey  he  so  dearly  loved, 


86  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

and  which  he  could  so  readily  and  profitably 
sell  when  he  could  " spare"  it.  He  looked 
with  equal  pride  on  a  row  of  thriving  okra- 
plants,  whose  long  green  pods  would  in 
midsummer  make  for  him  such  succulent  and 
nourishing  soups,  and  would  also  be  sliced 
into  delicate  pale  green,  six-rayed  stars,  and 
displayed  for  weeks  on  window-sills  and 
door-stones  and  shed -tops  and  stone  walls  in 
his  small  domain,  through  sunny,  windless 
days  when  the  starry  wafers  would  not  be 
blown  away,  drying  for  his  own  winter  use 
and  to  carry  to  Newport  to  sell.  His  only 
other  crop  was  represented  by  a  freshly 
turned  plot  of  earth — a  potato-field — which 
he  had  planted  the  previous  day. 

Cudd)Tnonk  stretched  himself  with  delight 
in  the  sunshine,  and  thus  spoke  to  his  wife, 
Rosann,  a  gay-turbaned  old  woman,  who 
was  twice  as  fat  and  twice  as  black  as  he 
was: 

"  I  tell  ye,  Rosann,  'tatoes  an'  honey  an' 
okra  is  a  tousan'  times  better' n  pigs;  ye 
don'  have  ter  feed  'em,  an'  tend  'em,  and 
watch  'em  eaten  theirselves  up.  Dey  jess 
grows  an'  grows  for  nothin'.  Ef  more  folks 
growed  'tatoes  an'  okra  in  dis  country, 
times'd  be  better'n  dey  is." 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  87 

Rosann  did  not  answer  him,  she  seldom 
did  ;  and  now  her  attention  was  called  to  a 
horse  and  rider  that  had  turned  from  the  main 
road  and  were  advancing  up  the  narrow  lane 
that  led  to  Cuddy's  house.  Mounted  visitors 
were  not  frequent  at  Cuddy's  humble  home, 
even  on  gubernatorial  business;  and  when 
he  and  Rosann  saw  that  the  horseman  was 
no  less  a  person  than  Constable  Cranston,  of 
North  Kings  ton,  they  stared  in  open-mouthed 
amazement.  No  less  astonished  were  they 
when  the  sheriff  announced  his  errand — that 
he  had  come  to  arrest  the  "Gov'nor"  for 
debt.  Suit  had  been  brought  against  him 
and  judgment  rendered,  and  his  arrest  was 
the  next  step. 

For  Cuddymonk,  like  many  another  phi- 
losopher and  many  another  politician,  was 
careless  and  even  tricky  in  business  matters, 
and  had  been  accused  by  both  black  and 
white  neighbors  of  "  never  paying  fer  noth- 
ing if  he  could  help  it."  That  he  should 
have  been  arrested  for  this  special  debt  was 
to  him  most  astonishing,  and  he  denounced 
it  as  keen  injustice.  He  thus  protested  to 
the  sheriff: 

"Mass'  Cranston,  yer  don't  know  what 
yer  a-doin'.  I  don't  owe  ole  man  Hazard 


88  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

nothin'  !  Yer  see,  it  was  jess  like  dis.  I 
say  ter  him,  I  mus'  hab  er  pig  ter  raise. 
He  say  ter  me,  '  Take  one  ob  mine ;  '  an' 
he  press  me  ter  take  it,  kase  it's  a  nmtlin', 
an'  he's  afear'd  it'll  die.  An'  Rosann,  she 
knows  how  ter  mother  runtlin's,  so  I  takes 
der  pig.  An'  I  say,  'Ole  man  Hazard,  I 
pay  you  free  dollar  ob  de  money  I  git  for 
der  pig.'  He  say,  'All  right,  Cuddy.' 
Now  I  don't  nebber  git  no  money  fer  dat 
pig.  I  buy  de  corn  ter  feed  der  pig  of  Peleg 
Brown  :  an'  when  I  kill  de  pig  an'  take  him 
ter  Peleg  ter  sell,  he  don'  come  ter  ser  much 
as  de  corn  he  eat.  I  t'ink  he  shrink  kase  I 
kill  him  in  de  discrease  ob  de  moon.  So  I 
nebber  got  nothin'  fer  de  pig,  so  in  course 
I  don'  owe  ole  man  Hazard  nothin'.  I 
ain't  got  no  money  ter  pay  wid,  anyway. 
I  tell  ye,  Mass'  Cranston,  times  nebber '11  be 
good  in  dis  country  till  corn's  a  pistareen  a 
bushel  an'  pork  a  pistareen  a  pound.  Den 
de  pore  man '11  hab  some  chance." 

Mr.  Cranston  knew  old  Cuddy  too  well 
to  allow  him  to  proceed  into  the  discussion 
of  political  economy;  and  he  interrupted 
the  "  Gov'nor,"  saying,  with  much  gravity, 
that  the  law  must  take  its  course,  nor  could 
the  execution  of  justice  be  delayed ;  that 


A  BLACK   POLITICIAN  89 

since  Cuddy  could  not  pay,  he  must  come 
at  once  with  him  to  jail.  The  negro  rose 
cheerfully,  saying,  as  he  hobbled  into  the 
house : 

"  Wai,  ef  I  mus'  go  I  mus';  but  de  exer- 
tootion  ob  justice' 11  hab  to  move  mighty 
slow  a-takin'  ole  Cuddy  ter  jail.  I'se  got  der 
rheumatiz,  so  I  can't  hardly  walk.  I'se  dat 
bad  I  t'inks  I  mus'  be  witch-rid  by  ole  Tug- 
gie  Bannocks.  Dat's  why  dat  pig  eat  ser 
much  corn  kase  she  conjured  him.  Times 
nebber'll  be  good  in  dis  country  whiles  dey 
don'  hang  ole  witches  like  Tuggie  Ban- 
nocks. Hitch  yer  hoss  ter  de  button-wood 
tree  an'  come  in  an'  set  down  while  I'se 
packin'  up,  an1  Rosann'll  cook  ye  some 
early  'tatoes.  Run  out  an'  git  some  of  our 
first  crap,  Sanna." 

"  Early  potatoes  !  "  exclaimed  Mr.  Cran- 
ston, "  at  this  time  of  the  year  !  " 

"  Yis,  I'se  a  fust-rate  farmer,  ef  I  ain't 
much  on  pig-raisin'.  I  allays  has  fine  early 
'tatoes,  de  fust  yer  see  anywheres.  Jes' 
look  at  dem !  ' ' 

Rosann  appeared  with  her  apron  full  of 
the  freshly  planted  potatoes,  that,  negro- 
fashion,  he  had  planted  whole,  and  that  had 
spent  a  few  hours  only  on  Cuddy's  farm  ; 


90  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

and  as  the  sheriff  refused  to  allow  her  to  cook 
them  for  him,  she  placed  them  upon  a  blan- 
ket in  the  centre  of  the  floor,  upon  which  she 
and  Cuddy  were  accumulating  the  articles 
that  the  negro  wished  to  take  to  jail  with 
him.  The  pile  rapidly  increased.  Old 
coats  and  shirts,  a  feather  pillow,  a  fiddle,  a 
prayer-book,  a  pair  of  long  boots  filled  with 
flax-seed,  were  added  to  the  contents  of  the 
blanket. 

"Come,  come,"  said  the  sheriff;  "you 
can't  take  all  that  along  with  you.  How  are 
you  going  to  carry  it  ?  " 

"I  guess  you'll  hab  ter  tote  it  for  me, 
Mass'  Cranston,  I'se  dat  bad  wid  the  rheu- 
matiz." 

This  was  more  than  the  constable  had  bar- 
gained for.  This  arrest  of  old  Cuddy  was 
more  than  half  a  joke,  and  was  done  at  the 
instigation  of  several  farmers  who  hoped  thus 
to  obtain  some  satisfaction  for  the  many  debts 
Cuddy  had  argued  and  twisted  himself  out 
of  paying.  They  had  all  fancied  that  the 
terrified  politician  would  gladly  pay  over  the 
three  dollars  at  once,  as  it  was  well  known 
that  Rosann  had  a  good  stockingful  of  silver 
dollars  hidden  under  the  hearth-stone — and 
one  of  her  stockings  full  of  silver  was  well 


A  BLACK   POLITICIAN  91 

worth  having.  The  constable  was  on  his 
way  to  attend  to  other  and  more  pressing 
duties,  and  had  but  little  time  to  spend  over 
this  arrest ;  much  less  did  he  wish  to  ride  to 
Kingston  jail  carrying  a  great  pack  of  Cuddy- 
monk's  clothing  and  possessions  behind  him. 
He  told  Rosann  to  remove  half  of  the  articles 
from  the  blanket,  and  a  long  and  wordy  argu- 
ment with  the  "  Gov'nor  "  arose  over  every 
relinquished  treasure,  ending  in  the  con- 
stable's complete  rout  when  he  attempted  to 
leave  the  foot-stove  behind  and  to  pour  the 
flax-seed  out  of  his  boots.  "  I  can't  do  dat, 
noway,"  said  Cuddy;  "it'll  spoil  deir  shape 
ef  I  don'  keep  flax-seed  in  'em,  an  I'seafeard 
I  can't  get  none  in  jail."  At  the  end  of 
half  an  hour  the  blanket  with  its  contents 
was  rolled  into  a  great,  irregular,  unwieldy 
bundle  and  strapped  on  the  horse's  back. 

The  man  of  law  mounted  his  horse,  and 
with  his  prisoner  passed  slowly  down  the 
narrow  lane  and  through  the  rocky  cross-road 
under  the  feathery  pale-green  foliage  and 
sweet-scented  pink-and-white  blossoms  of 
the  graceful  locust-trees  that  form  such  a 
glory  in  early  summer  by  all  the  roadsides 
throughout  sunny  Narragansett.  Flickering 
patches  of  glowing  sunlight  fell  through  the 


92  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

clusters  of  peachy  locust-blossoms  on  the 
stone  walls  and  hedgerows,  that  were  a  great, 
luxuriant,  tangled  garden  of  faintly  perfumed 
wild  flowers.  The  leaves  of  sweetbrier  and 
bayberry  sent  out  a  pungent,  spicy  odor  that 
mingled  with  the  vapid  and  cloying  sweet- 
ness of  the  locust-blossoms.  Great  fields  of 
clover  wafted  their  fresh  balm  in  little  puffs 
of  pure  sweetness  that  routed  the  combined 
fragrance  of  locust,  bayberry,  and  brier. 
Thousands  of  bees  hummed  over  the  sweet, 
sunny  fields  and  in  the  fragrant,  flowering 
branches — Cuddy's  own  bees  gathering  for 
him  the  luscious  honey  he  loved.  Singing- 
birds  flew  lightly  and  warbled  softly  around. 
The  tropical  blood  of  the  old  negro  fairly 
glowed  with  the  sense  of  light  and  perfume 
and  melody  and  warmth,  and  he  laughed 
aloud  with  sensuous  delight  as  if  the  road  to 
jail  lay  through  Paradise. 

He  hobbled  painfully,  however,  even  in 
the  warm  sunlight,  and  he  frequently  sat 
down  on  a  sunny  stone  to  rest  his  rheumatic 
old  bones;  but  his  tongue  never  ceased  wag- 
ging, and  he  poured  forth  to  the  constable 
a  flood  of  political,  ethical,  physical,  legal, 
spiritual,  meteorological,  thaumaturgical,  and 
medical  advice,  and  also  a  complete  local 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  93 

history  of  past  events  in  Narragansett.  A 
flame  of  youth  and  memory  and  happiness 
seemed  kindled  by  the  glorious  summer  day 
in  his  heart  and  brain,  though  his  poor  body 
was  too  stiff  and  worn  to  renew  also  its  ac- 
tivity and  youth. 

At  last  he  said,  smilingly,  to  the  constable: 
"  Mass'  Cranston,  ef  you'll  go  de  ribber  road 
an'  wants  ter  let  me  stop  ter  Kernel  Gardi- 
ner's I  kin  get  some  money;  he  owes  me  five 
dollar  for  honeycomb. ' ' 

Gladly  did  Sheriff  Cranston  consent, 
though  Colonel  Gardiner's  house  was  two 
miles  out  of  the  way,  for  he  saw  now  a  pros- 
pect of  release  from  his  cumbersome  charge. 
''Here,  Cuddy,"  he  said,  "we  sha'n't  get 
to  the  Colonel's  for  two  hours  at  this  rate — 
you  talk  so  much  and  walk  so  little.  You 
get  up  and  ride  and  I'll  walk  for  awhile, 
then  we  shall  get  along  faster." 

The  old  negro,  with  the  constable's  assist- 
ance, mounted  and  smiled  with  delight ;  for 
he  loved  a  horse,  as  do  all  of  his  race.  A 
gleam  of  humor  twinkled  in  his  eye  as  he 
urged  on  the  sturdy  sorrel,  a  half- blooded 
Narragansett  pacer,  until  she  ambled  along 
at  a  rate  that  forced  the  constable  to  walk  at 
an  uncomfortably  rapid  and  perspiring  pace. 


94  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

Nor  was  Mr.  Cranston  altogether  comfortable 
mentally.  He  winced  several  times  in  his 
progress  at  the  laughing  inquiries  and  jeers 
of  the  farmers  that  he  saw  in  the  field  or 
passed  in  the  road;  and  the  shouts  of  the 
district-school  children  at  the  ''Corner," 
who  chanced  to  be  ' '  out  at  recess  ' '  as  the 
"  Black  Gov'nor  "  and  his  white  foot-runner 
coursed  along,  made  him  keenly  conscious 
that  the  dignity  of  the  law  was  not  fully  pre- 
served, either  in  his  hurrying,  panting  figure 
or  in  the  grotesque  appearance  of  short-legged 
Cuddy.  For  the  Narragansett  pacer,  like 
others  of  her  race,  was  phenomenally  broad- 
backed  ;  and  Cuddy's  short,  stiff  legs,  clad 
in  their  unsightly,  flapping  tow  tongs,  stuck 
out  at  an  absurd  angle,  showing  a  long  ex- 
panse of  skinny,  bare  ankles  that  looked  like 
yellow  turkey-legs  ;  and  the  enormous  uncur- 
ried  leather  shoes  that  he  had  donned,  in  which 
to  walk  in  comfort  to  jail,  looked  twice  as 
large  as  ever  in  that  prominent  position.  The 
constable  had  an  uneasy  suspicion  that  Cuddy 
had  retained  his  tow  tongs  and  long- tailed 
coat,  and  had  put  on  his  old  black  satin  brass- 
buckled  stock  and  red  woollen  comforter  and 
great  moth-eaten  fur  cap — the  worst  clothes 
he  had  in  the  world — in  order  to  look  as 


A  BLACK   POLITICIAN  95 

ridiculous  as  possible,  and  thus  guy  his  cap- 
tor. But  the  cheerful  yellow  countenance 
of  the  prisoner  bore  not  a  trace  of  any  possi- 
bility of  ever  cherishing  a  sinister  design. 

When  they  reached  the  great  gambrel- 
roofed  house  of  Colonel  Gardiner  the  negro 
dismounted  and  entered.  He  soon  reap- 
peared, saying,  cheerfully,  "I'se  got  de 
money,  Mass'  Cranston." 

"  Hurry  up,  then,  and  give  me  the  three 
dollars, ' '  said  the  constable,  impatiently.  ' '  I 
want  to  get  off." 

The  negro  stared  in  astonishment:  "I 
ain't  agoin'  ter  spen'  dat  honey-money  dat 
way — payin'  fer  an  ole  dead  pig  I  don'  owe 
nothin'  fer.  I'se  goin'  to  keep  it  ter  be 
comferable  in  jail  wid.  Didn'  yer  hear  Ro- 
sann  say,  '  Keep  comferable,  Cuddy?  '  Dat's 
why  I  brung  de  foot-stove  fer !  " 

The  constable  was  wild  with  indignation 
and  disgust.  He  had  gone  two  miles  out  of 
his  way — painfully  running  and  perspiring 
while  his  prisoner  rode  at  ease — and  now  he 
was  farther  from  the  end  of  his  vexatious 
business  than  ever.  He  impatiently  explained 
and  argued  to  the  stubborn  negro  that  if  he 
would  only  pay  over  part  of  the  five  dollars 
he  would  need  no  jail  comforts.  Still  the  old 


96  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

man  was  persistent  in  his  determination  ;  he 
had  started  to  go  to  jail,  and  to  jail  he  would 
go. 

"I  ain't  agoin'  ag'inst  de  course  ob  de 
law.  It  'ud  be  a  pretty  scandal  fer  de  Gub'- 
nor  not  ter  go  ter  jail  when  he  'rested.  Set 
ebberybody  a  bad  edsample.  I'se  er  law- 
erbidin'  citterzman,  an'  I'se  goin'  ter  'bey 
de  law  ob  de  Ian'.  B'sides,  Rosann  she  say 
she  t'inksl  get  red  ob  my  rheumatiz'  in  jail. 
Ole  Tuggie  Bannocks  can't  get  me  out  nights 
ter  witch-ride  me. ' ' 

The  discomfited  sheriff  at  last  rode  slowly 
on,  while  Cuddy  again  hobbled  alongside,  still 
cheerful,  still  philosophizing,  still  advising. 
Mr.  Cranston  was  puzzled.  He  could  not  aban- 
don his  prisoner,  nor  could  he  persuade  or 
force  him  to  pay  the  debt ;  still  less  could  he 
hurry  him,  and  the  time  to  perform  other  and 
more  important  duties  was  close  at  hand.  At 
last,  completely  baffled  and  conquered,  he  sud- 
denly exclaimed  :  "  Here,  Cuddymonk,  I've 
had  enough  of  this;  take  your  bundle,  I'll  pay 
your  debt  to  old  Hazard  and  the  costs,  too. ' ' 

"  Mass'  Cranston,  is  dat  de  way  yer  does 
yer  duty  ?  I'se  agoin'  ter  jail  ef  I  hab  ter 
walk  dere  alone,  an'  tell  de  jedge  dat  de 
constable  run  off  an'  leff  me.  I  ain't  no 


A  BLACK   POLITICIAN  97 

runnagadore.  I'se  goin'  in  de  cause  ob  de 
right.  You'se  'rested  me,  an'  I'se  agoin'  ter 
stay  'rested.  I  nebber  see  a  jail,  anyway, 
an'  I  wants  ter  see  one.  Times  neber'll  be 
good  in  dis  country  till  bof  people  an'  rulers 
knows  erbout  de  instertootions  ob  de  Ian' !" 

Again  did  the  baffled  sheriff  explain  and 
expostulate  and  seek  to  rouse  in  Cuddy  a 
sense  of  pride  and  dread  of  shame.  "  It's 
most  time  for  'Lection  Day,  Cuddy.  You'll 
never  be  elected  again  if  you  go  to  jail. 
They'll  never  want  a  rogue  forGov'nor. " 

"  'Cause  de  Gov'nor  am  a  rogue  this  year 
ain't  no  sign  de  next  one  won't  be,"  an- 
swered wise  Cuddy.  And  when  the  con- 
stable had  straightened  out  Cuddy's  am- 
biguous thought,  he  said  to  himself  that 
black  politics  were  much  like  white. 

"  I  can't  see  why  all  you  blacks  are  so 
dishonest  and  tricky!" 

"Why,  Mass'  Cranston"  (with  an  in- 
jured but  unresentful  air),  "  dey  has  ter  be 
— dey  so  kep'  down.  It  all  de  fault  ob  da* 
unrageous  ole  George  Washin'ton.  When 
he  a-dyin  he  rolls  his  eyes  an'  say  :  '  Foreb- 
ber  keep  de  nigger  down  ' — an*  it  take  a 
hundred  year  to  work  out  a  dyin'  spell." 

This    astounding    piece   of    post-mortem 


98  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

news  about  the  Father  of  his  Country  was 
new  to  the  constable,  though  it  was  com- 
monly believed  by  negroes  then  as  now.  He 
answered  Cuddy  severely  and  sharply  : 

"  Who  told  you  that  nonsense  ?  It's  no 
reason,  anyway.  There  is  no  need  for  any 
nigger  to  be  dishonest  unless  he  wants  to." 

"  Now,  Mass'  Cranston,  dis'  jess  de  way 
I  looks  at  it.  Times  nebber'll  be  good  in 
dis  country  till  things  is  fixed  an'  proputty's 
divided  so  no  one  can't  be  poor  ;  den  no  one 
can't  be  dishonest,  cause  ef  dey  has  plenty 
dey  won't  want  ter  be." 

The  constable  felt  that  it  was  useless  to 
argue  further  with  such  a  philosopher,  and 
rode  on  for  some  time  in  silence ;  then  he 
desperately  exclaimed:  "  Cuddy,  what' 11 
you  take  to  go  home  again  ?  I  can't  bother 
any  longer  with  you.  I've  got  to  go  to 
Wickford  to-night,  and  you  can't  walk 
there." 

The  old  negro  shook  his  head  profound- 
ly and  thoughtfully,  and  sighed  deeply,  as 
though  abandoning  with  keen  regret  a  dear- 
ly loved  and  cherished  plan;  then  he  said, 
solemnly : 

"  No  bribe'll  ebber  soil  dis  hand  while  it 
fills  de  office  ob  de  Gub'nor's  seat  !  But 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  99 

dey  do  say  de  best  charm  eber  seed  ter 
bring  good  luck  forebber  is  ter  look  at  a 
constable  a-dancin'  ober  runnin'  water. 
Now  here's  de  bridge  an'  a  good  dancin'- 
floor.  I'll  hole  der  hoss  an'  sing  '  Old 
Charmany  Fair,'  an'  you  dance,  ter  bring 
good  luck  ter  me  in  de  'lection  next  week. 
Den  I  s'pose  I'll  hab  ter  gib  up  going  ter 
jail  dis  time  just  ter  please  yer." 

The  constable  was  stunned  by  this  auda- 
cious and  fairly  insulting  proposition  ;  but 
being  thoroughly  convinced  that  Cuddy  was 
half  demented,  he  thought  it  better  to  yield 
at  once  to  the  stubborn  negro's  condition, 
and  thus  save  his  precious  and  much-wasted 
time.  He  jumped  from  his  horse  and 
angrily  yanked  off  Cuddy's  blanketful  of 
jail  equipage,  and  threw  it  on  the  ground. 
He  glanced  apprehensively  up  and  down  the 
road  to  see  that  there  was  no  approaching 
traveller  to  spread  the  tale  of  his  ridiculous 
discomfiture  and  abject  submission,  and  then 
walked  to  the  middle  of  the  bridge  and  be- 
gan to  sullenly  dance  to  Cuddy's  lively  and 
rollicking  dance-tune.  The  jolly  song  and 
dismal  jig  were  nearly  ended,  when  a  most 
surprising  and  inexplicable  event  took  place. 
The  constable's  sedate  and  quiet  horse  gave 


ioo  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

a  sudden  snort,  reared,  broke  away  from 
Cuddy's  restraining  hand,  and  plunged  vio- 
lently down  the  hill. 

"Stop  her!  Stop  her,  Cuddy!"  roared 
Mr.  Cranston,  as  he  suddenly  ceased  his 
forced  dance  and  began  to  run. 

"  I  ain't  agoin'  ter  run  none  after  dat  ole 
hoss,"  said  Cuddy  ;  "  I'se  got  derheumatiz' 
too  bad.  You  jess  see  ef  you  can't  run 
faster  as  you  can  dance.  You  can't  catch 
her,  dough,"  he  called  after  the  retreating 
sheriff.  "  I  know  she's  conjured  by  de  way 
she  run.  It  always  do  conjure  a  hoss  to  see 
a  constable  a-dancin'  ober  runnin'  water." 

As  the  constable  shouted  ' '  Whoa ! "  at  the 
top  of  his  lungs  and  chased  wildly  down  the 
hill  out  of  sight,  Cuddy  walked  to  the  side  of 
the  bridge  and  threw  into  the  water  the  long, 
sharp  locust-thorn  that  had  done  such  sly 
and  good  execution  as  a  spur,  as  a  "  con- 
jure "  to  the  sheriffs  steed.  Then  he  sat 
down  by  the  side  of  his  blanket  bundle  in  the 
hot  noonday  sunlight,  and  he  took  out  his 
fiddle  and  scraped  and  sawed  to  the  bees 
and  birds  and  butterflies  like  a  jolly  yellow 
Pan.  And  he  chuckled  and  laughed  and 
whistled  and  sang,  and  once  he  jumped  up 
and  danced  through  "  Old  Chalmotini  Fair  " 


A  BLACK  POLITICIAN  101 

with  a  brisk  vigor  that  put  to  shame  the  un- 
willing and  clumsy  efforts  of  the  constable, 
and  made  the  tow  tongs  and  the  blue  coat- 
tails  snap  and  flap  around  his  shrivelled  old 
yellow  legs.  It  was  certainly  most  astonish' 
ing  to  see  such  agility  and  activity  in  a  man 
so  aged,  and  in  one  so  rheumatic  and  so 
witch-ridden  an  hour  previously.  At  last  a 
passing  farm- wagon  picked  him  up  and  car- 
ried him  and  his  great  bundle  to  his  own 
door. 

As  Cuddymonk  replanted  his  early  pota- 
toes the  following  morning,  he  once  more 
soliloquized  to  his  wife  : 

"I  tell  you,  Rosann,  dat  ole  fool  ob  a 
Cranston  won't  nebber  'rest  me  fer  debt  no 
more.  I  ain't  goin'  to  raise  no  more  pigs 
anyway,  even  ef  I  does  get  'em  somewhat 
cheap.  'Tatoes  is  better 'n  pigs.  Times 
nebber' 11  be  good  in  dis  country  till  ebbery- 
body  stops  raisin'  pigs  an'  plant  'tatoes; 
dat's  de  true  secret  ob  de  pollitercul  crisis 
ob  dis  land. ' ' 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP 

IN  the  darkness  of  Christmas  morning,  in 
the  year  1811,  old  Benny  Nichols  could 
not  sleep.  He  was  not  thinking  of  Santa 
Claus  nor  of  Christmas  gifts ;  he  was 
watching  for  the  first  gray  dawn  which 
marked  his  regular  rising  hour,  and  he 
tossed  and  turned,  wondering  why  he  was 
so  wakeful,  until  at  last  he  rose  in  despair 
and  lighted  a  candle  to  discover  how  long 
he  had  to  wait  ere  daybreak.  To  his 
amazement  he  found  the  hands  of  the  old 
clock  pointing  to  the  hour  of  nine,  and  as 
he  stood  shivering,  candle  in  hand,  star- 
ing at  the  apparently  deceitful,  bland  face 
the  clock  raised  its  voice  and  struck  nine, 
loudly  and  brassily,  as  if  to  prove  that  its 
hands  and  face  told  the  truth.  Benny 
then  walked  quickly  to  the  window,  and 
saw  that  the  apparent  darkness  and  length 
of  the  night  came  from  a  great  wall  of 
snow  which  covered  the  entire  window 
105 


106  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

and  which  had  nearly  all  fallen  since  the 
previous  sunset. 

Keenly  awake  at  once  when  he  recog- 
nized the  lateness  of  the  hour,  the  old  man 
wakened  his  wife  Debby,  and  bade  her 
"hurry  up  and  git  somethin'  to  eat.  It's 
nine  o'clock,  and  we've  had  the  wust 
snowstorm  ye  ever  see,  and  me  a-laying' 
here  in  bed,  and  them  new  sheep  a- \valkin' 
into  the  sea  and  gittin'  drownded  !  " 

Benny  was  a  weazened-faced,  dried-up 
old  man,  who  was  the  shepherd  of  a  large 
Narragansett  farm  which  lay  between 
Fender  Zeke's  Corner  and  the  bay.  He 
knew  well  the  danger  that  came  to  sheep 
in  a  heavy  snowstorm.  He  had  seen  a 
great  flock  of  a  hundred  timid,  shrinking 
creatures  retreat  and  cower  one  behind  the 
other  to  shelter  themselves  from  the  fierce 
beating  of  the  wind  and  sleet,  until,  in 
spite  of  his  efforts,  all  were  edged  into  the 
sea  and  lost,  save  a  half-dozen  whose  throats 
were  cut  by  him  with  a  jack-knife  to  save 
the  mutton.  Without  waiting  for  any  warm 
food,  he  cautiously  opened  the  door  to  dig 
himself  out. 

"Ye  can't  go  out,  Benny  Nichols,  in 
them  shoes,"  said  Debby,  firmly.  "I  told 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  107 

ye  long  ago  they  was  half  wore  out — here, 
put  on  yer  Sunday  long-boots." 

This  suggestion  was  a  bitter  one  to  pru- 
dent Benny,  who  expected  to  have  those 
boots  for  Sunday  wear  for  the  next  ten 
years,  just  as  he  had  for  the  past  ten ;  and 
he  knew  well  what  a  hard  day's  work  he 
had  before  him,  and  how  destructive  it 
would  prove  to  shoe-leather.  But  Debby 
was  firm,  and,  seizing  the  great  boots  from 
the  nail  on  which  they  hung,  she  poured 
out  the  flax-seed  with  which  they  were  al- 
ways kept  filled  when  they  were  not  on 
Benny's  feet.  The  old  man  pulled  them 
on  his  shrivelled  legs  with  a  groan  at  Deb- 
by's  extravagance,  and  then  proceeded  to 
dig  out  a  path  in  the  snow.  Benny  had 
not  seen  such  a  snow-storm  since  the  great 
' '  Hessian  snow-storm  ' '  in  the  winter  of 
1778,  when  so  many  Hessian  soldiers  per- 
ished of  cold  and  exposure.  When  he 
reached  the  surface  and  could  look  around 
him,  he  saw  with  satisfaction  that  the  snow 
and  wind  had  blown  during  the  previous 
night  away  from  the  water,  hence  his  sheep 
would  hardly  be  drowned.  He  quickly 
discovered  a  strange-shaped  bank  of  snow 
by  the  side  of  one  of  the  great  hay-ricks, 


io8  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

so  common  throughout  Narragansett,  and 
he  shrewdly  suspected  that  some  of  his 
sheep  were  underneath  the  great  drift. 
When  carefully  searched  with  a  rake-stale 
this  proved  to  be  the  case,  and  when  he 
shovelled  them  out  all  in  the  mound  were 
alive  and  well.  In  a  snow-drift,  by  the 
side  of  a  high  stone  wall,  he  found  the 
remainder  of  his  flock,  save  one,  a  fine  lit- 
tle ewe  of  the  creeper  breed,  the  rarest  and 
most  valued  of  all  his  stock.  As  sheep- 
sheds  at  that  time  were  unknown  in  Nar- 
ragansett, the  loss  of  sheep  was  great  in 
the  Christmas  storm,  and  many  cattle  were 
frozen  in  the  drifts;  and  one  shepherd 
noted  two  weeks  later  that  the  hungry 
cattle  he  foddered  never  touched  a  full 
lock  of  hay  that  he  had  thrown  on  the 
top  of  a  little  hillock  of  snow  near  his  rick. 
So  he  thrust  at  it  with  his  hay-tines,  and  in 
so  doing  he  lifted  off  a  great  shell  of  snow- 
crust,  and  there  peered  out  of  the  whiteness 
the  bronze,  wrinkled  face  of  the  old  squaw 
Betty  Aaron,  who  was  sitting  bolt  upright, 
frozen  stiff  and  dead,  her  chin  resting  on 
both  hands,  her  elbows  on  her  knees. 
Hence  Benny  was  justly  proud  of  his  res- 
cued flock,  though  he  mourned  the  one  sheep 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  109 

that  was  lost,  and  blamed  himself  for  sleep- 
ing so  late,  saying,  he  "wouldn't  have 
minded  spilin'  his  roast-meat  boots  if  he 
could  have  found  the  creeper. ' ' 

On  the  fourteenth  day  of  January  Benny 
Nichols  chanced  to  see  in  the  snow,  by  the 
side  of  a  hay-rick  which  stood  a  mile  away 
from  his  home,  a  small  hole  about  half  an 
inch  in  diameter,  which  his  practised  eye 
recognized  at  once  as  a  "breathing-hole," 
and  which  indicated  that  some  living 
thing  had  been  snowed  in  and  was  lying 
underneath.  He  broke  away  the  covering 
of  icy  crust,  and  to  his  amazement  saw  a 
poor  creature  of  extraordinary  appearance, 
which  he  at  first  hardly  could  believe  was 
his  own  lost  creeper  sheep.  She  was  alive, 
but  alas !  in  such  a  sorry  plight. 

The  hungry  sheep,  in  her  three  weeks' 
struggle  against  starvation,  had  eaten  off 
every  fibre  of  her  own  long  wool  that  she 
could  reach,  and  she  lay  bare  and  trem- 
bling in  the  cold  air,  too  weak  to  move, 
too  feeble  to  bleat  either  in  distress  or 
welcome.  Old  Benny  wrapped  the  half- 
dead  creature  in  the  corner  of  his  cloak 
and  carried  her  home  to  Debby,  who  fairly 
shed  tears  at  the  sight  of  the  poor  naked 


no  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

skeleton  of  a  sheep.  Tenderly  did  the 
kind  woman  wrap  the  frozen  ewe  in  an  old 
flannel  petticoat  and  feed  her  with  warm 
milk,  a  few  drops  only  at  first,  and  then 
with  much  caution  until  the  sheep  was 
able  to  digest  her  ordinary  food.  In  a 
week  the  creeper  seemed  as  strong  as  ever, 
quickly  gained  the  lost  flesh,  and  could 
bleat  both  loud  and  long.  And  with  re- 
turning health  she  grew  active  and  mis- 
chievous, and  was  constantly  thrusting  her 
long  black  nose  into  the  most  unexpected 
and  most  unsuitable  places,  to  the  great 
distress  of  careful  Debby,  who  longed  to 
put  her  out  of  doors. 

But  the  sheep's  lost  wool  could  not  grow 
as  quickly  as  did  the  fat  on  her  ribs,  and 
she  could  not  be  thrust  out  thus,  naked  and 
bare,  in  the  winter  air,  so  Debby  decided  to 
make  for  the  little  creature  a  false  fleece.  For 
this  purpose  she  took  an  old  blue  coat  which 
had  once  been  worn  by  her  son,  and  cut  off 
the  sleeves  until  they  were  the  right  length  to 
cover  the  ewe's  forelegs.  She  then  sewed  at 
the  waist  of  the  coat  two  sleeves  from  an  old 
red  flannel  shirt ;  these  were  to  cover  Nan- 
ny's hind  legs.  And  when  Debby  drew  on 
the  gay  jacket  and  buttoned  it  up  over  the 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  in 

sheep's  long  backbone  with  the  large  brass 
coat-buttons,  there  never  was  seen  such  a 
comical,  stunted,  hind-side-foremost  carica- 
ture of  what  is  itself  a  caricature — an  organ- 
grinder's  monkey. 

When  Benny  carried  the  gayly  dressed 
Nanny  out  to  the  enclosed  yard,  it  was  hard 
to  tell  which  exhibition  of  feeling  was  the 
keenest — ^poor,  unconscious,  and  absurd  Nan- 
ny's delight  in  her  freedom  and  her  eager 
desire  to  take  her  place  with  her  old  com- 
panions, or  the  consternation  and  terror  of 
the  entire  flock  at  the  strange  wild  beast 
which  was  thus  turned  loose  among  them. 

They  ran  from  side  to  side,  and  crowded 
each  other  against  the  paling  so  unceasingly 
and  so  wildly,  that  Benny  carried  the  un- 
willing ewe  back  to  the  kitchen. 

At  nightfall,  however,  Benny  again  placed 
Nanny  in  the  open  field  with  the  sheep, 
thinking  that  they  would  gradually,  through- 
out the  darkness,  become  used  to  the  presence 
of  her  little  harlequin  jacket,  and  allow  her 
to  graze  by  their  side  in  peace. 

That  night  two  cronies  of  Benny's  came 
from  a  neighboring  farm  to  talk  over  that 
ever-interesting  topic,  the  great  snowstorm, 
and  to  buy  some  of  his  lambs.  The  three 


H2  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

old  men  sat  by  the  great  fireplace  in  the  old 
raftered  kitchen  in  the  pleasant  glow  from 
the  blazing  logs,  each  sipping  with  unction 
a  mug  of  Benny's  famous  flip,  while  Debby 
rubbed  with  tallow  the  sadly  stiffened  long- 
boots  that  had  been  worn  in  the  Christmas 
snow.  Suddenly  a  loud  wail  of  distress 
rang  in  their  ears,  the  door  was  thrust  vio- 
lently open,  and  in  stumbled  the  breathless 
form  of  the  tall,  gaunt  old  negress  Tuggie 
Bannocks.  She  was  a  relic  of  old  slavery 
times,  who  lived  on  a  small  farm  near  the 
old  Gilbert  Stuart  Mill,  on  Petaquamscut 
River.  They  all  knew  her  well.  She  had 
bought  many  a  pound  of  wool  from  Benny 
to  wash  and  card  and  spin  into  yarn,  and 
she  always  helped  Debby  in  that  yearly  trial 
of  patience  and  skill — her  soap-making.  The 
old  negro  woman  had  double  qualifications 
to  make  her  of  use  in  this  latter  work  :  her 
long,  strong  arms  could  stir  the  soap  untir- 
ingly for  hours,  and  then  she  knew  also  how 
to  work  powerful  charms — traditional  relics 
of  Voodooism — to  make  the  soap  always  turn 
out  a  success. 

Tuggie  Bannocks  sank  upon  the  table 
by  the  fire,  murmuring.:  "  Tanks  be  to 
Praise  !  Tanks  be  to  Praise!  "  and  closed 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  113 

her  eyes  in  speechless  exhaustion.  Debby 
took  a  half-crushed  basket  of  eggs  from  the 
old  woman's  arm,  drew  off  her  red  woollen 
mittens,  and  rubbed  briskly  her  long  cold 
claws  of  hands.  Benny  had  a  vague  remem- 
brance of  the  old-time  "  emergency  "  saying, 
"  feathers  for  fainters,"  and  seized  a  tur- 
key's wing  that  was  in  daily  use  as  a  hearth- 
brush,  thrust  it  into  the  flames,  and  then 
held  the  scorching  feathers  under  the  old 
negress's  nose  until  all  in  the  room  were 
coughing  and  choking  with  the  stifling 
smoke. 

Spluttering  and  choking  at  the  dense 
feather-smoke,  Tuggie  gasped  out :  "  I  ain't 
dead  yit — I  specks  I  shall  be  soon,  dough — 
kase  I  seen  de  ole  witch  a-ridin' — I'se  most 
skeered  to  death  "  (then  in  a  fainter  voice) 
— "gib  me  a  mug  of  dat  flip."  Startled, 
Benny  quickly  drew  a  great  mug  of  home- 
brewed beer  and  gave  it  a  liberal  dash  of 
Jamaica  rum  and  sugar,  then  seized  from  the 
fire  the  red-hot  "  loggerhead  "  and  thrust  it 
seething  into  the  liquid  until  the  flip  boiled 
and  bubbled  and  acquired  that  burnt,  bitter 
flavor  that  he  knew  Tuggie  dearly  loved. 
The  old  woman  moaned  and  groaned  as  she 
lay*  on  the  table-top,  but  watched  the  brewing 


H4  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

of  the  flip  with  eager  eye,  and  sat  up  with 
alacrity  to  drink  it. 

With  many  a  shuddering  sigh  and  many 
a  glance  behind  her  at  the  kitchen  door,  and 
crossing  her  ringers  to  ward  off  evil  spirits  she 
began  :  "  Ye  know,  Miss  Nickkels,  I  telled 
ye  I  was  witch-rid  by  ole  Mum  Amey,  an' 
dis  how  I  know  I  was.  Ye  see  I  was  a-goin1 
to  wuk  a  charm  on  her  first  off — not  to  hurt 
her  none,  jess  to  bodder  her  a  leetle — an'  I 
jess  put  my  project  on  de  fire  one  night,  an' 
it  jess  a-goin'  to  boil,  an'  in  come  her  ugly, 
ole  grinnin'  black  face  at  de  door,  an'  say 
she  a-goin'  to  set  wid  me  a  spell."  Mum 
Amey  was  a  wrinkled  half-breed  Indian  of 
fabulous  age  and  crabbed  temper,  a  "  squaw- 
nurse,  ' '  who  was,  of  course,  not  half  as  black 
as  negro  Tuggie.  "She  walk  ober  to  de 
chimbly  to  light  her  pipe  an'  ask  me  what  I 
a-cookin',  an'  I  say  Ise  a-makin'  glue,  cause 
Ise  afeard  she  see  de  rabbit's  foot  in  de  pot, 
an'  I  say  it  all  done,  an'  yank  de  pot  offen 
de  crane  so  she  can't  see  into  it.  An'  ob 
course  when  I  take  de  project  offen  de  fire 
afore  it's  wukked,  it  break  de  charm ;  an* 
wuss  still,  I  can't  nebber  try  no  project  on 
her  no  more.  Ole  Mum  Amey  larf,  an'  say, 
a-leerin'  at  me,  dat  pot  ob  glue  won't  nebber 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  115 

stick  nothin'  no  more.  An'  ebber  sence  dat 
night  I  ben  witch-rid.  Mornin's  when  I 
wakes  up  I  sees  marks  ob  de  bit  in  de  cor- 
ners ob  my  mouf,  where  Mum  Amey  ben 
a-ridin'  me  all  ober  Boston  Neck  an'  up  de 
Ridge  Hill  till  I  so  tired  and  stiff  I  can't 
hardly  move.  Ise  ben  pinched  in  de  night 
an'  hab  my  ha'r  pulled.  An'  my  butter 
won't  come  till  I  drops  a  red-hot  horseshoe 
in  de  cream  to  dribe  her  out.  One  day  I 
jess  try  her  to  see  ef  she  a  witch  (dough  I 
know  she  one,  'cause  I  see  her  talkin'  to  a 
black  cat) ;  I  drop  a  silber  sixpence  in  her 
path,  an'  jess  afore  she  get  to  it  she  turn  an' 
go  back,  jess  I  know  she  would.  No  witch 
can't  step  ober  silber.  An'  now,  Benny 
Nickkels,  I  know  for  shore  she's  a  witch,  I 
see  her  jess  now  in  de  moonlight  a-chasin' 
an'  ridin'  your  sheep;  an',  shore's  yer 
bawn,  yer' 11  find  some  on  'em  stone  dead  in 
de  mornin' — all  on  'em,  mebbe  !  " 

Benny  looked  wretched  enough  at  this 
statement.  Dearly  as  he  loved  his  sheep  and 
ready  as  he  was  to  face  physical  discomfort 
and  danger  in  their  behalf,  he  was  too  su- 
perstitious to  dare  to  go  out  in  the  night  to 
rescue  them  and  brave  the  witch. 

"How    did    she    look,    Tuggie?     And 


n6  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

what  did  she  do?"  whispered  awe -struck 
Debby. 

"  Oh,  she  was  mons'ous  fearsome  to  see  ! 
Witches  don't  nebber  go  in  deir  own  form 
when  dey  goes  to  deir  Sabbaths.  She  was 
long  an'  low  like  a  snake.  She  run  along  de 
groun'  jess  like  a  derminted  yeller  painter, 
a-boundin',  an'  leapin',  an'  springin',  a- 
chasin'  dem  pore  sheeps — oh,  how  dey  run  ! 
Wid  her  old  red  an'  blue  blanket  tied  tight 
aroun'  her — dat's  how  I  knowed  her.  An' 
she  had  big  sparklin'  gold  dollars  on  her 
back — wages  ob  de  debbil,  I  'specks.  Some- 
times she  jump  in  de  air  an'  spread  her 
wings  an'  fly  awhile.  Smoke  an'  sparks 
come  outen  her  mouf  an'  nostrums !  Big 
black  horns  stick  outen  her  head  !  Lash  her 
long  black  tail  jess  like  de  debbil  hisself !  " 

At  this  dramatic  and  breathless  point  in 
Tuggie's  flip-nourished  and  quickly  growing 
tale,  credulous  Debby,  whose  slow- working 
brain  had  failed  to  grasp  all  the  vivid  details 
in  the  black  woman's  fervid  and  imaginative 
description,  interjected  this  gasping  com- 
ment :  "It  must  ha'  been  the  devil  or  the 
creeper. ' ' 

Benny  jumped  from  his  chair  and  stamped 
his  foot,  and  at  once  burst  into  a  loud  laugh 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  117 

of  intense  relief,  and  with  cheerful  bravado 
began  to  explain  animatedly  to  his  open- 
mouthed  cronies  that  of  course  anyone 
could  see  that  Tuggie's  sheep-chasing  witch 
was  only  the  creeper  sheep  in  her  new  fleece, 
and  he  offered  swaggeringly  to  go  out  alone 
to  the  field  to  bring  the  ewe  in  to  prove  it. 

The  old  negress  sprang  to  her  feet,  in- 
sulted and  enraged  at  the  jeering  laughter 
and  rallying  jokes,  and  advanced  threat- 
eningly toward  him.  Then,  as  if  with  a 
second  thought,  she  stopped  with  a  most 
malicious  look,  and  in  spite  of  Debby's  con- 
ciliatory explanations  and  her  soothing  ex- 
pressions "  that  it  might  have  been  Mum 
Amey  after  all,"  she  thrust  aside  Benny's 
proffered  mollification  of  a  fresh  mug  of  flip, 
seized  her  crushed  basket,  stalked  to  the 
door,  and  left  the  house  muttering,  vindic- 
tively :  "  High  time  to  stop  such  unrageous 
goin's-on — dressin'  up  sheeps  like  debbils — 
scarin'  an  ole  woman  to  death  an'  breakin'  all 
her  aigs  !  Ole  Tuggie  Bannocks  ain't  forgot 
how  to  burn  a  project!  Guess  dey won't 
larfat  witches  den  !  " 

And  surely  enough — as  days  passed  it 
could  plainly  be  seen  that  the  old  negress 
had  carried  out  her  threat — for  the  chimney 


n8  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

was  "conjured" — was  "salted."  On 
windy  nights  the  shepherd  and  his  wife  were 
sure  they  could  hear  Tuggie  dancing  and 
stamping  on  the  roof,  and  she  blew  down 
smoke  and  threw  down  soot,  and  she  called 
down  the  chimney  in  a  fine,  high,  shrieking 
voice:  "I'll  project  ye,  Benny;  I'll  pro- 
ject ye."  And  she  burnt  the  cakes  before 
the  fire,  and  the  roast  upon  the  spit,  and 
thrice  she  snapped  out  a  blazing  coal  and 
singed  a  hole  in  Debby's  best  petticoat, 
though  it  was  worn  wrong  side  out  as 
a  saving-charm.  And  Benny  could  see, 
too,  that  the  old  ram  was  bewitched.  The  re- 
mainder of  the  flock  soon  became  accus- 
tomed to  the  sight  of  Nanny's  funny  false 
fleece,  but  he  always  fled  in  terror  at  her  ap- 
proach. He  grew  thin  and  pale  (or  at  any 
rate  faded),  and  he  would  scarcely  eat  when 
Nanny  was  near.  Debby  despairingly  tried  a 
few  feeble  counter-charms,  or  ' '  warders, ' '  but 
without  avail.  When  sheep-shearing  time 
came,  however,  and  Nanny,  shorn  of  her  un- 
canny fleece  and  clothed  in  her  own  half- 
inch  snowy  wool,  took  her  place  with  the 
other  short-clipped  members  of  the  flock,  he 
ceased  to  be  "  witch-rid  " — the  "  project," 
the  "conjure"  was  worked  out.  He  grew 


THE  WITCH  SHEEP  119 

fat  and  fiercely  brave,  and  became  once 
more  the  knight  of  the  field,  the  lord  of  the 
domain,  the  patriarch,  the  potestate  of  his 
flock. 

The  story  of  Tuggie  Bannocks's  fright  and 
her  revengeful  "project"  spread  far  and 
wide  on  every  farm  from  Point  Judith  to 
Pottawomat,  and  was  told  in  later  years  by 
one  generation  of  farmers  to  another.  And 
as  time  rolled  on  and  Nanny  reared  her 
lambs  and  they  her  grand-lambs,  the  creeper 
sheep  were  known  and  sold  throughout  Nar- 
ragansett  by  the  name  of  witch-sheep. 


THE 
CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE 


THE 
CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE 

IN  a  grass-grown  graveyard  by  the  side  of 
an  old  Presbyterian  church  in  Narragansett, 
the  warm,  midday  sun  shone  brightly  down 
one  spring  Sabbath  in  the  year  1760  upon 
two  boys  twelve  years  of  age,  two  cousins, 
named  Elam  Noyes  and  Cotton  Fayerweather. 
They  stood  by  the  side  of  their  grandfather's 
grave,  which  bore  a  new  blue  slate  head- 
stone, inscribed  with  his  name  and  age,  and 
the  verses  : 

"You  children  of  ye  name  of  Noyes 
Make  Jesus  Christ  yo'r  oleny  choyse." 

The  boys  had  gone  into  the  church-yard 
with  the  apparent  design  of  examining  this 
fine,  though  misspelled,  token  of  the  stone- 
cutter's art,  but  were  really  speaking  and 
thinking  of  a  very  different  subject.  They 
would  never  have  been  allowed  to  wander  in 
the  church-yard  to  indulge  in  idle  talk,  and 
even  now  could  spend  but  a  few  minutes  in 
123 


124  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

conversation  together.  It  was  their  only 
meeting-time  during  the  week,  for  they  lived 
at  extreme  ends  of  the  town,  and  Elam 
recited  his  lessons  to  the  Baptist  minister, 
who  lived  near  him,  while  Cotton  attended 
the  village  school.  They  were  two  well- 
built,  healthy  boys,  both  dressed  in  clumsy, 
homespun  suits  of  clothes,  with  full  knee- 
breeches,  long-flapped  coats  and  waistcoats, 
coarse  yam  stockings  and  buckled  shoes, 
and  great  gray  beaver  hats  several  sizes  too 
large  for  them.  Elam  was  as  solemn  and 
serious  in  his  appearance  as  was  his  father, 
but  in  his  brain  was  a  current  of  keen  ro- 
mance rarely  found  in  the  head  of  any  elderly 
colonist.  As  he  left  the  church-yard  with 
his  cousin  he  said,  with  muchimpressiveness, 
"  Remember,  Cotton,  if  you  are  not  here  by 
candle-light  I  shall  tarry  no  longer,  but  shall 
go  home." 

For  several  Sundays,  as  the  boys  had 
walked  among  the  graves,  and  while  they 
had  been  busy  with  the  care  of  their 
fathers'  horses,  Elam  had  occupied  every 
moment  in  telling  to  Cotton  all  that  he 
could  remember  of  a  wonderful  story  he  had 
read  in  New  Haven.  Two  months  previ- 
ously he  had  ridden  with  his  father  to  that 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE     125 

town,  and  in  the  tap-room  of  the  "ordina- 
ry" at  which  they  had  "put  up"  during 
their  stay  there  had  lain  a  pile  of  about  forty 
books,  which  a  sea-captain  had  left  to  be 
sold  to  any  chance  traveller,  or  to  towns- 
people who  might  be  inclined  to  purchase 
them.  There  were  several  copies  of  Tate 
and  Brady's  new  Psalms,  which  some  of  the 
New  England  Puritans  wished  to  use  instead 
of  the  loved  old  Bay  Psalm-book,  two  or 
three  Bibles,  half  a  dozen  volumes  of  ser- 
mons, a  Dutch  Psalm-book,  which  was  not 
Dutch  at  all,  but  a  collection  of  English 
songs  and  ballads,  Milton's  "  Paradise 
Lost, ' '  a  few  prayer-books,  and  then  there  was 
a  wonderful  book  which  Elam  did  not  have 
time  to  finish,  though  he  had  not  wasted  a 
moment.  It  thrilled  and  filled  him  with 
adventurous  longings,  and  was  called  "  Rob- 
inson Crusoe."  This  was  the  first  and  only 
story-book  he  had  ever  seen,  and  as  he  retold 
the  wonderful  tale  to  Cotton,  the  desire  to 
run  away  out  into  the  great  world,  to  cross 
the  ocean  and  see  some  strange  sights  and 
lead  a  different  life  from  that  on  a  Nar- 
ragansett  farm,  grew  strong  in  both  boys' 
breasts. 

At  last  Elam,  having  a  fertile  though  un- 


126  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

exercised  imagination,  developed  a  plan  of 
action.  They  would  leave  home  and  meet 
at  the  old  meeting-house,  where  they  would 
spend  several  weeks  of  idleness,  roaming  the 
woods  by  day  and  sleeping  in  the  noon- 
house  by  night,  and  when  everyone  in  town 
was  tired  of  searching  for  them,  then  they 
would  make  their  way  to  the  sea-shore  with- 
out fear  of  capture,  and  get  on  board  a  ship 
and  sail  off  somewhere.  They  could  hide  in 
the  wood  on  the  Sabbath  days,  and  as  the 
meeting-house  stood  on  a  lonely  road  in  a 
great  wood  on  the  top  of  a  high  hill,  there 
would  be  but  few  passers-by  on  week-days, 
and  hence  few  chances  of  discovery.  And 
now  I  must  explain  about  the  noon-house, 
which  was  to  be  their  sleeping-place,  for  none 
of  those  queer  old  buildings  now  exist  in 
New  England. 

By  the  side  of  the  barn-like  church  were 
three  long,  low,  mean,  stable-like  log  build- 
ings, which  could  hardly  be  stables,  since  at 
one  end  of  each  hut  was  a  rough  stone  chim- 
ney. These  were  noon-houses,  or  "  Sabba-day 
houses."  One  had  been  built  by  Elam  and 
Cotton's  grandfather,  and  was  used  by  the 
families  of  his  children.  Until  the  early 
years  of  this  century,  only  two  or  three 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE      127 

meeting-houses  throughout  New  England 
contained  stoves.  All  through  the  long, 
bleak,  winter  weeks,  through  fierce  "  nor'- 
westers  "  and  piercing  frosts,  the  lonely 
churches  stood,  growing  colder  and  colder, 
until  when  they  were  opened  upon  the  Sab- 
bath the  chill  and  damp  seemed  almost  un- 
bearable. The  women  brought  to  church 
little  iron  foot-stoves  filled  with  hot  coals. 
Upon  these  stoves  they  placed  their  feet,  and 
around  them  the  shivering  children  sat  at 
their  mothers'  feet  and  warmed  their  chilled 
hands.  But  by  the  time  the  long  service 
was  over — for  often  the  minister  preached 
two  hours  and  prayed  an  hour,  and  some  of 
the  Psalms  took  half  an  hour  to  sing — you 
can  easily  see  that  the  warmth  would  all 
have  died  out  of  the  little  foot-stove,  and 
the  mothers  and  children  would  be  as  cold  as 
the  fathers,  which  is  saying  a  great  deal. 

Now  these  half-frozen  Baptists  and  Puri- 
tans and  Episcopalians  could  hardly  have 
remained  to  attend  an  afternoon  service  and 
lived  through  it,  so  they  built  houses  with 
chimneys  and  fireplaces  near  the  church 
where  they  could  go  and  make  a  fire  and 
get  warm  and  eat  their  lunch,  and  when 
they  asked  permission  to  put  up  such  a  build- 


128  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ing  they  said  it  was  to  « '  keep  their  duds 
and  horses  in." 

And,  surely  enough,  at  one  end  of  the 
noon -house  were  usually  several  stalls  for  the 
horses,  who  doubtless  also  enjoyed  the  warmth 
that  came  from  the  fireplace  at  the  end  of 
the  room.  The  "duds"  were  the  saddles 
and  pillions  on  which  the  church  attendants 
had  been  seated  on  their  ride  to  church, 
and  the  saddle-bags  which  were  full  of  good 
things  to  eat.  Sometimes  a  few  cooking- 
utensils  to  warm  the  noonday  food  were 
kept  in  the  noon-house,  and  often  hay  for 
the  horses  and  a  great  load  of  logs  to  burn 
in  the  fireplace,  and  sometimes  a  barrel  of 
"  cyder,"  to  drink  at  the  nooning. 

Frequently  a  large  noon-house  was  built 
by  several  farmers  in  company,  and  I  am 
afraid  the  children  did  not  then  enjoy  their 
Sunday  noontimes,  for  some  old  deacon  or 
elder  usually  read  a  sermon  to  them  between 
the  morning  and  afternoon  services,  and  they 
had  to  sit  still  and  listen. 

So  you  see  that  Elam  and  Cotton  had 
very  comfortable  quarters  to  sleep  in  when 
they  ran  away  to  the  noon-house  on  the 
Monday  following  the  opening  of  my  story. 
Each  arrived  about  an  hour  before  sunset, 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE   NOON-HOUSE      129 

laden  with  all  the  food  that  he  had  been 
able  to  capture  before  leaving  home.  Cot- 
ton had  a  great  piece  of  salt-pork  and  a 
dozen" eggs,  some  of  which  had  had  a  rather 
disastrous  journey  in  his  coat-pockets.  Elam 
had  a  great  crushed  mass  of  dough-nuts  and 
brown  bread.  This  was  not  all  of  their 
provisions  for  their  sojourn,  for  on  each  suc- 
cessive Sunday  for  five  weeks  previously  both 
boys  had  crowded  their  great  pockets  with 
russet  apples  and  their  saddle-bags  with  cold 
corn-bread  and  brown  bread,  and  they  had 
starved  themselves  at  each  nooning  in  order 
to  save  their  food  and  thus  provide  for  the 
coming  day  of  need  ;  and  they  had  concealed 
their  treasures  in  an  empty  corn-bin  at  the 
horses'  end  of  the  house.  Cotton  felt  sure 
that  they  had  food  enough  to  last  them  for 
three  weeks — rather  dry  and  conglomerated, 
to  be  sure,  but  still  good  enough  for  boys  of 
healthy  appetites  and  simple  Puritan  tastes. 
Elam  also  had  brought  a  flint  and  tinder- 
box  with  him,  and  with  their  aid  and  that 
of  some  light  "  candle-wood  "  he  soon  had 
a  blazing  fire  upon  the  hearth,  the  coals  of 
which  he  carefully  covered  up  to  save  till 
morning,  and  then  the  two  Robinson  Cru- 
soes  climbed  upon  the  hay  and  fell  asleep. 


130  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

The  story  of  the  first  day  spent  by  the 
runaways  in  their  retreat  would  be  the  story 
of  all  the  days,  which  were  not  as  pleasure- 
filled  as  they  had  hoped.  They  had  no  hut 
to  build,  no  goats  to  tame,  no  savages  to 
fight  and  dread.  They  rose  early  in  the 
morning,  for  the  habits  of  their  daily  life 
were  strong,  and  they  did  not  dare  have  a 
fire  much  after  daybreak,  lest  the  smoke 
from  the  chimney  should  be  discovered  by 
some  rare  passer-by.  They  ate  their  break- 
fast of  brown  bread  and  cheese  and  apples 
and  drank  a  little  of  the  hard  cider.  As 
the  weather  was  fortunately  warm,  they 
lolled  on  the  stones  behind  the  noon-house 
while  Elam  told  over  and  over  again  the 
story  of  Robinson  Crusoe  and  tales  of  the 
Indians  that  he  had  heard  from  his  grand- 
father. They  fished,  with  some  success,  in 
a  little  brook  which  ran  through  the  woods, 
and  one  day  they  caught  a  rabbit  in  a  trap 
which  Cotton  had  set,  and  which  he  had 
learned  how  to  make  from  old  Showacum,  a 
"  praying  Indian  "  who  lived  in  the  village. 
These  trophies  of  their  skill  they  of  course 
skinned  and  cleaned  and  cooked,  and 
though  they  were  hungry — for  they  were 
hungry  all  the  time — the  unsalted  fish  and 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE     131 

game  did  not  seem  very  appetizing  to  them. 
They  found  a  treasure  one  day  in  the  woods 
— a  store  of  nuts  which  had  been  forgotten 
or  neglected  or  reserved  until  spring  by  some 
kindly  squirrels — and  with  a  few  cakes  of 
toothsome  maple-sugar  they  had  some  va- 
riety of  diet. 

But  alas,  they  also  had  healthy  young  ap- 
petites, and  on  Saturday  night  Cotton  awak- 
ened to  a  fact  whose  approach  had  been 
plainly  looming  up  before  Elam  for  some 
time — that  their  three  weeks'  supply  of  food 
was  all  gone.  A  half-decayed  apple  was 
their  sole  supper.  A  drink  of  the  sour  cider 
seemed  only  to  make  their  hunger  harder  to 
bear,  but  at  last  they  fell  asleep.  Perhaps 
the  pangs  of  his  gnawing  stomach  made  Elam 
sleep  more  lightly  than  on  previous  nights, 
perhaps  the  equally  keen  pangs  of  his  awak- 
ened conscience  may  have  made  him  restless, 
but  at  midnight  he  suddenly  sprang  to  his 
feet  with  an  exclamation  of  horror  at  a  sound 
which  he  recognized  at  once  as  the  howl  of 
a  wolf.  He  jumped  to  the  fire,  wakening 
Cotton,  who  tumbled  out  of  his  nest  of  hay 
with  a  bewildered  and  wretched  expression 
and  an  impatient  cry  of,  "  Oh,  why  did  you 
wake  me  up  when  I  am  so  hungry ;  pray  let 


132  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

me  sleep  if  you  do  or  not,"  when  nearer  and 
louder  still  rose  the  mournful  howl  of  the 
wolf.  With  trembling  hand  Cotton  heaped 
the  light  wood  on  the  blaze  which  Elam  had 
started  with  the  old  leather  bellows,  and 
then  threw  log  after  log  on  the  hearth  until 
the  blaze  roared  up  the  chimney.  Of  course, 
the  wolves — for  they  could  hear  more  than 
one — could  not  get  into  the  noon-house,  as 
window  and  shutter  were  fast,  but  the  boys 
were  so  wretched  with  hunger,  so  homesick, 
so  lonesome,  that  they  hardly  stopped  to 
reason,  and,  trembling  with  fear,  Cotton 
seized  an  iron  "loggerhead"  which  his 
father  kept  in  the  noon -house,  and  thrust  it 
into  the  coals  to  heat  to  a  red-hot  pitch, 
when  it  could  be  used  as  a  weapon.  A 
"  loggerhead  "  was  a  bar  of  iron  which  was 
used  as  a  stirring-stick  in  making  "flip." 
Deacon  Fayerweather  always  brought  to 
church  each  winter  Sunday  in  his  saddle-bags 
three  or  four  bottles  of  home-brewed  beer 
and  a  bottle  of  Jamaica  rum,  from  which, 
with  the  aid  of  the  loggerhead,  he  made  a 
famous  jug  of  flip  for  the  minister  and  dea- 
cons at  the  nooning. 

And  now  the  peaceful  loggerhead  was  the 
only  weapon   the  two  wretched  boys  pos- 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE      133 

sessed,  and,  indeed,  all  they  needed,  for  in  a 
short  time  the  howls  of  the  wolves  grew 
fainter  and  fainter  and  at  last  were  no  longer 
heard.  All  thought  or  power  of  sleep  had, 
however,  vanished  from  the  brains  of  the, 
terrified  young  Crusoes  at  this  experience  of 
the  pleasures  of  adventure.  All  wish  for 
final  escape  to  the  sea-shore  had  also  disap- 
peared, and  now  their  only  longing  was  to 
return  home.  All  the  remaining  hours  of 
the  night  they  sat  by  the  fire,  while  Elam, 
romantic  in  spite  of  hunger,  fright,  and  dis- 
appointment, made  known  his  plans  for  the 
following  day.  Toward  morning  they  let 
the  fire  die  down  and  expire,  and  when  the 
sun  was  fully  risen  they  left  their  sheltering 
noon-house  and  hid  in  the  woods  not  far 
from  the  meeting-house,  trembling,  how- 
ever, at  every  sound  as  they  thought  of  their 
dread  night-visitors. 

As  nine  o'clock  drew  near  there  approached 
the  church  on  every  side,  on  foot  and  on 
horseback,  the  members  of  the  congregation. 
All  knew  of  the  mysterious  disappearance  of 
Cotton  and  Elam,  for  the  country  had  been 
widely  and  quickly  scoured  for  them.  Among 
the  worshippers  came  Deacon  and  Mistress 
Fayerweather  and  Goodman  Noyes  and  his 


134  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

wife,  for  all  felt  it  a  godly  duty,  even  in  time 
of  deep  affliction,  not  to  neglect  the  public 
worship  of  God  on  the  Sabbath.  Despair- 
ingly did  the  sad  parents  hope  to  hear  some 
news  of  their  lost  boys,  who  had  apparently 
vanished  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  for 
neither  in  farm-house  nor  in  field,  neither  on 
the  road  nor  at  the  toll-gate,  neither  by  trav- 
eller nor  by  hunter,  had  they  been  seen.  The 
very  simplicity  of  their  plan  had  been  its 
safety.  Forty  years  previously  the  whisper 
of  kidnapping  by  the  Indians  would  have 
added  terror  to  the  parents'  grief,  but  those 
days  were  happily  over. 

After  sad  greetings  had  been  exchanged 
and  the  minister  had  entered  the  pulpit,  the 
congregation  seated  itself  for  its  usual  Sun- 
day-morning service.  The  opening  half-hour 
prayer  was  ended,  the  church  attendants  had 
let  down  their  slamming  pew-seats  (for  the 
seats  in  those  old  New  England  meeting- 
houses always  turned  up  on  hinges  to  allow 
the  pew  occupants  to  lean  against  the  walls 
of  the  pew  during  the  long  prayer),  the  min- 
ister had  read  with  trembling  voice  a  note 
which  had  been  sent  to  him,  "  desiring  the 
prayers  of  the  congregation  for  two  families 
in  great  inconveniency  and  distress,"  when 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE     135 

a  door  on  the  leeward  side  of  the  church 
slowly  opened  and  two  pale,  dishevelled,  and 
most  wretched-looking  youngsters  crept  slow- 
ly and  shamefacedly  in.  The  habit  of  constant 
self-repression  and  self-control,  characteristic 
of  the  times,  was  all-powerful,  even  in  this 
intense  moment  of  crisis  for  the  families  of 
Fayerweather  and  Noyes.  The  deacon  flushed 
scarlet,  but  did  not  move  from  his  raised  seat 
in  front  of  the  congregation.  A  faint  murmur 
swept  over  the  entire  assembly  at  the  appear- 
ance of  Cotton  and  Elam,  but  was  at  once 
repressed.  The  boys  walked  calmly  on  to 
their  accustomed  seats  on  the  gallery  stairs, 
under  the  supervision  of  the  tithingman. 
That  zealous  officer  rapped  sharply  on  the 
head  with  his  long  staff  two  or  three  of  the 
occupants  of  one  of  the  "  boys*  pews,"  who 
had  turned  around  and  stared,  and  whispered 
noisily  at  the  appearance  of  the  runaways. 
The  old  minister,  being  slightly  deaf,  had 
heard  no  ripple  of  commotion,  and,  not  hav- 
ing glanced  at  the  late  comers,  proceeded 
to  offer  a  pathetic  prayer  for  the  lost  ones, 
' '  whom  God  held  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand, ' ' 
a  prayer  that  brought  to  Elam  and  Cotton  a 
realizing  sense  of  their  selfishness  and  wick- 
edness, and  which  worked  a  lesson  that  in- 


136  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

fluenced  them  through  life.  The  parson  then 
gave  out  his  text:  "He  will  have  charge 
over  thee  concerning  thee,"  and  worked  his 
way  on  in  his  accustomed  and  somewhat  mo- 
notonous fashion,  though  with  many  allusions 
to  the  two  wanderers,  until  at  fourteenthly 
came  the  long-deferred  end.  Nor  was  there 
any  murmur  of  feeling  heard  (though  the 
mothers'  eyes  were  filled  with  tears),  when 
Deacon  Fayerweather,  in  a  slightly  trembling 
voice,  lined  out  the  Psalm : 

O  give  yee  thanks  unto  the  Lord 

because  that  good  is  hee, 
Because  his  loving-kindness  lasts 

in  perpetuitee. 

I'th'  desart  in  a  desart  way 
they  wandered :  no  towne  finde 

to  dwell  in.     Hungry  and  thirsty 
their  Soul  within  them  pinde. 

Then  did  they  to  Jehovah  cry    - 
when  they  were  in  distresse 

Who  did  them  set  at  liberty 
out  of  their  anguishes. 

In  such  a  way  as  was  most  right 

he  led  them  forth  also 
That  to  a  citty  which  they  might 

inhabit  they  might  go. 


THE  CRUSOES  OF  THE  NOON-HOUSE      137 

I  wish  I  could  say  that  the  boys'  parents, 
being  so  glad  to  get  the  wanderers  home, 
permitted  them  to  go  unpunished,  but  alas  ! 
early  New  Englanders  believed  firmly  that 
' « foolishness  is  bound  up  in  the  heart  of  a 
child,"  and  never  spared  the  rod;  and,  as 
1 '  sloathefulnes  "  and  disobedience  to  parents 
were  specially  abominated,  such  high-handed 
rebellion  as  this  of  Elam  and  Cotton  could 
hardly  be  allowed  to  pass  by  without  being 
made  a  public  example.  Then,  too,  unfort- 
unately for  the  boys,  the  warmth  of  joy  at 
recovering  the  lost  ones  had  time  through 
the  two  hours  of  sermon  to  cool  down  and 
change  into  indignation.  So  at  the  close  of 
the  service  Deacon  Fayerweather,  after  rather 
coldly  greeting  his  son  and  nephew,  asked 
the  advice  of  the  minister  upon  so  important 
a  subject,  who  gave  as  his  opinion  that  the 
gravity  of  the  offence,  the  necessity  of  the 
lesson  to  other  youths  in  the  congregation, 
and  the  conveniency  of  circumstances  seemed 
to  point  out  plainly,  and  was  furthermore 
upheld  by  Scripture,  that  public  chastisement 
should  be  given  upon  the  spot,  and  that 
Elder  Rogers  was  best  fitted,  both  by  age, 
dignity,  and  strength,  to  administer  both  re- 
buke and  punishment.  And  with  promptness 


138  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

and  despatch  and  thoroughness  the  decree 
was  carried  out ;  both  boys  were  * '  whipped 
with  birchen  rods  "  while  standing  upon  the 
horse-block  before  the  church. 

But  though  the  colonial  fathers  were  stern 
and  righteously  disciplinarian,  the  colonial 
mothers  were  loving  and  tender,  as  are  moth- 
ers everywhere  and  in  all  times,  and  Mistress 
Fayerweather  and  Mistress  Noyes  each  bore 
off  her  weeping  boy  to  the  noon-house  and 
filled  his  empty  stomach  well  with  dough- 
nuts and  pork  and  peas  and  pumpkin-bread, 
until,  with  comfort  and  plenty  within,  ex- 
ternal woes  and  past  terrors  were  forgotten. 


THE  DOCTOR'S  PIE-PLATES 


THE  DOCTOR'S   PIE-PLATES 

MANY  of  my  cherished  china  treasures, 
having  no  historical  association  and  being  of 
comparatively  coarse  ware,  would  be  of  little 
value  on  the  shelves  of  a  collector,  and  also 
of  little  interest  to  the  general  observer  ;  but 
they  are  endeared  to  me  by  the  remembrance 
of  the  circumstances  under  which  they  were 
found,  or  by  some  story  connected  with  their 
past  owner  or  their  past  history. 

I  have  a  set  of  dark-blue  Staffordshire 
plates,  known  as  the  "  Doctor's  Pie- 
plates,"  which  are  resplendent  with  an  in- 
terest that  does  not  come  from  their  glorious 
color,  rich  as  it  is,  nor  from  the  wit  of  the 
humorous  scenes  they  represent.  The  plates, 
named,  respectively,  "  Dr.  Syntax's  Noble 
Hunting-party,"  "Dr.  Syntax  Upsets  the 
Beehives,"  "  Dr.  Syntax  Painting  the  Por- 
trait of  His  Landlady,"  "  Dr.  Syntax  Tak- 
ing Possession  of  His  Rectory,"  and  "Dr. 
Syntax  Star-gazing,"  are  printed  from  a 
141 


142  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

set  of  pictures  drawn  by  Thomas  Rowland- 
son,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  designers  of 
humorous  and  amnsing  subjects  of  his  day. 
They  were  drawn  and  engraved  to  illustrate 
a  book  published  by  William  Combe,  in 
1812,  called  "  Dr.  Syntax's  Tour  in  Search 
of  the  Picturesque."  A  second  tour,  "In 
Search  of  Consolation,"  appeared  .in  1820. 
This  was  also  illustrated  by  Rowlandson.  A 
third  tour,  "In  Search  of  a  Wife,"  was 
printed  the  following  year.  These  books 
had  an  immense  and  deserving  popularity. 
Not  only  did  these  blue  Staffordshire  plates 
appear,  copying  the  amusing  designs  from  the 
Dr.  Syntax  illustrations,  but  a  whole  set  of 
Derby  figures  were  modelled — Dr.  Syntax 
Walking,  In  a  Green-room,  At  York,  At  the 
Bookseller's,  Going  to  Bed,  Tied  to  a  Tree, 
Scolding  the  Landlady,  Playing  the  Violin, 
Attacked  by  a  Bull,  Mounted  on  Horseback, 
Crossing  the  Lake,  Landing  at  Calais,  etc., 
and  also  were  sold  in  large  numbers. 

The  "  Doctor's  Pie-plates  "  did  not,  how- 
ever, receive  their  name  on  account  of 
the  presence  of  the  laughable  figure  of  Dr. 
Syntax  in  their  design,  but  from  a  far  dif- 
ferent and  more  serious  and  deeply  felt  rea- 
son. They  were  once  used  as  pie-plates ; 


THE  DOCTOR'S  PIE-PLATES          143 

or,  rather,  I  should  say  more  exactly  and 
truthfully,  were  used  once  as  pie-plates,  and 
the  story  of  that  solitary  pie-episode  in  their 
history,  with  the  succeeding  results  of  their 
one  period  of  use  in  that  capacity,  will  ex- 
plain their  fresh,  unused  condition,  and 
show  why  I  prize  them  so  highly,  and  re- 
veal also  the  reason  why  I  call  them  the 
1 '  Doctor' s  Pie-plates. ' '  The  name  has  a  deep 
significance ;  the  pie-plates  are  captured  tro- 
phies of  past  war,  sad  emblems  of  hopeless 
rebellion,  never-fading  ceramic  proofs  and 
emblems  of  the  selfishness,  the  tyranny  of 
man. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, an  American  gentleman  married  in 
England  an  English  lady  of  some  wealth. 
They  brought  to  America  with  them  in  a 
sailing-vessel,  as  part  of  the  bride's  wedding- 
outfit,  a  gayly  painted,  richly  mounted  trav- 
elling-coach. In  this  great  coach  they  rode 
in  grand  style  with  four  post-horses  from 
Boston  to  Albany,  New  York,  and  Philadel- 
phia, and  back  to  the  little  town  in  Narra- 
gansett,  which  was  ever  after  their  home. 
In  due  time  they  died,  and  left  to  their  only  . 
son,  a  physician,  all  their  worldly  goods, 
including  the  old  coach,  and  the  far  less  de- 


144  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

sirable  inheritance  of  a  high  and  stubborn 
temper,  and  a  firm  and  deep-seated  venera- 
tion for  English  customs,  manners,  traditions, 
and  productions,  which  would  be  worthy 
an  Anglomaniac  of  the  present  day.  He, 
however,  made  one  unfortunate  and  incom- 
prehensible deviation  from,  his  Anglo- wor- 
ship when  he  married  an  American  wife. 
As  years  went  on,  the  Doctor  grew  more 
and  more  overbearing  and  dictatorial,  espe- 
cially in  his  household  (as  some  English 
husbands  are  also  said  to  be),  and  in  the 
matter  of  food  and  of  cooking — those  un- 
fortunate hobbies  of  an  ill-tempered  man- 
he  took,  perhaps,  the  most  violent  stand. 
Never  did  any  other  wife  have  to  hear  so 
often  the  words,  "as  my  mother  used  to 
cook  it,"  and  "  they  don't  do  it  so  in  Eng- 
land," or  have  to  listen  so  frequently  to 
acrimonious  expressions  of  dislike  of  Ameri- 
can cooks  and  cooking.  Pork  and  beans, 
"cracker  johnny-cake,"  Indian-pudding, 
even  the  purely  Dutch  dough-nuts  were  ban- 
ished from  his  board  \  for  not  only  did  he 
refuse  to  eat  these  New  England  dishes 
himself,  but  would  not  let  his  wife  and 
daughters,  either.  He  also  became  unjust 
enough  bumptiously  to  denounce  as  "  Amer- 


THE  DOCTOR'S  PIE-PLATES          145 

ican  "  and  "  taboo  "  any  food  (no  matter  of 
what  nationality)  which  did  not  suit  his 
fancy  or  which  chanced  to  disagree  with 
him. 

On  an  unlucky  day,  having  eaten  too 
greedily  of  mince-pie  (for  he  had  a  fine  Eng- 
lish appetite),  he  passed  his  universal  ban- 
ishing dictum  on  that  darling  of  New 
England  hearts  and  stomachs  —  the  pie. 
From  thenceforth  on  feast-days  only  English 
plum-pudding  was  served  for  dessert.  To  the 
New  England  wife,  accustomed  to  see  at 
least  four  kinds  of  pie  offered  to  "  com- 
pany," if  one  made  pretence  even  of  being 
truly  hospitable  and  housewifely,  the  lonely 
pudding  was  a  great  and  almost  unbearable 
source  of  grief  and  mortification,  and  many 
a  struggle  did  she  make  (trying  to  imitate 
her  forefathers  of  old)  against  the  English 
yoke,  but  in  vain;  pieless  and  barren  for 
years  was  her  table.  But  reinforcing  troops 
at  last  came  to  her  rescue  ;  for  three  daughters 
were  grown,  and,  brave  and  strong  with 
youth,  they  dared  to  rebel  more  openly  and 
recklessly  than  their  browbeaten  mother. 

In  1830  all  the  Doctor's  relatives,  far  and 
near,  were  invited  to  eat  "  Thanksgiving 
dinner"  with  him  and  his  family;  for  he 


146  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

was  hospitable  enough,  in  his  own  fashion; 
in  all,  thirty  were  to  sit  down  at  his 
board.  On  the  day  before  Thanksgiving, 
mother,  daughters,  and  "help"  were  all 
busy  at  work  from  early  morning  in  the  great 
pantry  and  kitchen,  making  careful  prepara- 
tion for  the  coming  dinner,  and  brisk  sounds 
of  chopping  and  pounding  and  mixing  were 
heard,  and  savory  smells  and  spicy  vapors 
filled  the  house.  Toward  the  close  of  the 
day,  when  their  work  was  nearly  done,  they 
suddenly  heard,  to  their  terror,  the  sound  of 
the  Doctor's  cane  (for  he  was  badly  crippled 
with  that  typical  English  disease,  the  gout) 
thump,  thumping  through  the  halls  and 
rooms  to  the  kitchen,  an  apartment  he  sel- 
dom visited.  With  palpitating  hearts  but 
firm  countenances  they  stood  in  a  hollow 
square  for  strength,  as  does  any  determined 
band,  while  he  walked  past  them  to  the 
"buttery,"  where  were  placed  in  military 
rows  twenty-six  of  those  hated  abominations, 
pies — mince-pies,  pumpkin  and  apple  and 
cranberry,  and,  the  crowning  dainty  of  all, 
' '  Marlboro'  ' '  pies.  Their  only  hope  of 
salvation  was  that  in  the  dull,  fading  Novem- 
ber light  the  tyrant  might  not  discover  the 
forbidden  pastry;  and,  indeed,  he  did  not 


THE  DOCTOR'S  PIE-PLATES          147 

appear  to  do  so,  for  he  merely  glanced  scowl- 
ingly  around,  and,  without  speaking,  hobbled 
back  to  his  office.  Once  more  they  breathed 
freely,  and  the  eldest  daughter  said,  cheer- 
fully: "Now,  girls,  nothing  can  happen;  if 
he  had  seen  them  we  should  have  had  to 
give  them  away;  but  he  won't  know  any- 
thing about  it  now  until  they  are  brought 
on  the  table  with  the  pudding,  and  he  will 
be  most  through  his  bottle  of  port  then — but 
oh,  what  shall  we  do  when  the  company 
goes?" 

Poor  souls!  they  slept  for  one  night  the 
happy,  unconscious  sleep  of  the  victorious, 
the  hospitable,  and  awoke  on  Thanksgiving 
morn  to  find  every  pie  vanished  from  the 
pantry-shelf.  Every  pie?  Yes,  and  every 
pie-plate,  too  ! — twenty-six  of  the  new  Eng- 
lish blue-and-white  stone-ware  plates.  At 
first  they  really  believed,  in  their  simplicity, 
that  a  thief  must  have  entered  from  outside 
and  stolen  them;  but  why  should  the  ma- 
rauder take  pies,  and  no  other  food?  Then, 
too,  there  was  not  a  foot-print  on  the  light 
snow  which  had  fallen  early  in  the  evening. 
No ;  the  Doctor  must  have  stolen  his  wife's 
pies !  But  where  could  he  have  hidden  the 
pie-plates?  For  weeks,  yes,  for  years,  they 


148  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

searched  in  every  nook  and  corner ;  through 
the  hay  in  the  barns,  behind  the  logs  of  wood 
in  the  sheds,  in  old  barrels  and  boxes  in  the 
cellar,  in  closets,  in  trunks,  under  the  eaves  in 
the  attic;  and  they  even  peered  out  on  the 
roof  behind  the  peaks  of  the  gable-windows, 
but  no  pie-plates  could  they  find.  The  grim 
old  Doctor  kept  his  silence,  until  his  daugh- 
ters grew  at  last  to  think  that  some  thief 
must  have  entered  in  spite  of  apparent  im- 
possibility. 

Thirty-six  years  later,  in  1866,  the  aged 
Doctor  died,  and  went,  doubtless,  to  an 
English  paradise.  His  browbeaten  wife 
had  given  up  the  struggle  many  years  before. 
The  daughters,  now  elderly  women,  with  a 
long-concealed  but  unsubdued  hatred  born 
of  years  of  tyrannical  browbeating  and  op- 
pression, at  once  made  a  triumphal  holocaust 
of  many  of  the  cherished  treasures  of  the 
British  tyrant ;  and  the  first  victim  doomed 
to  destruction  was  the  old  English  coach  in 
which  their  English  grandmother  had  ridden 
in  state  through  the  country.  This  broken- 
down,  moth-eaten,  rat-nibbled,  cobweb  and 
dirt-filled  relic  had  stood  unused  for  fifty 
years — an  abominable  nuisance,  an  inconven- 
ient obstruction,  a  hated  eyesore,  in  the 


THE  DOCTOR'S  PIE-PLATES          149 

carriage-house  connected  with  their  dwell- 
ing. The  Doctor  had  cherished  it  on  ac- 
count of  its  English  birthplace ;  but  now  its 
fate  was  sealed.  As  the  first  heavy  blow  of 
the  destroying  iconoclastic  axe  struck  the 
hated  coach,  a  loud  rattle  as  of  falling  crock- 
ery was  heard,  and  the  executioner  paused. 
A  careful  investigation  discovered  an  un- 
known compartment  under  the  driver's  seat 

-which  had  been  constructed  for  the  pur- 
pose of  hiding  despatch-boxes  and,  perhaps, 
the  bride's  jewel-cases — and  in  this  hiding- 
place  were  twenty-six  dirt-covered,  dark- 
blue  Staffordshire  plates.  A  sudden  light 
of  comprehension  and  recognition  came 
into  the  faces  of  the  sisters — here  were  the 
long-lost  pie-plates  !  The  cantankerous  old 
Doctor  had  craftily  arisen  in  the  night, 
hobbled  out  silently,  in  spite  of  his  gout, 
thrown  the  carefully  and  daintily  made 
Thanksgiving  pies  to  the  pigs,  stealthily 
packed  the  plates  in  the  old  coach,  watched 
maliciously  the  unsuccessful  plate  -  search, 
kept  silence  throughout  the  despoiled 
Thanksgiving  dinner  and  through  nearly 
forty  pieless  years,  and  died  triumphant. 

Half  of  this  treasure-trove,  which  the 
Doctor  could  hide,  but,  happily,  could  not 


150  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

take  with  him,  were  the  Dr.  Syntax  plates  ; 
and  from  that  half  came  my  share.  The 
other  plates  were  of  well-known  English 
views — Payn's  Hill,  the  City  of  Liverpool, 
Blenheim  Castle,  Fulham  Church -yard, 
Windsor  Castle — no  American  views  were 
on  any  of  his  crockery ;  no  landing  of  Lafay- 
ette, no  State  plates,  were  ever  allowed  to 
grace  that  rank  old  Tory's  pantry. 

Thus,  one  good,  one  noble  result  came 
from  this  "ugly  trick" — the  hidden  pie- 
plates  were  all  saved  unscratched,  unbroken, 
for  the  Doctor's  kinsfolk  to-day,  who,  in 
gratitude  for  his  unintentional  posthumous 
favor,  suitably  reward  him  by  telling  the 
story  of  his  spiteful  midnight  theft  whenever 
we  show  the  plates.  And,  moreover,  we 
wantonly  and  openly  insulted  and  jeered  at 
his  memory  and  his  gastronomic  laws  by 
formally  and  derisively  naming  the  dark-blue 
salvage  from  the  coach  the  Doctor's  Pie- 
plates. 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS 

THE  circumstances  under  which  I  first  saw 
my  old  Delft  apothecary  jars  were  so  pain- 
ful, so  mortifying,  that  for  a  long  time  I 
could  not  bear  even  to  think  of  them ;  but 
now,  as  years  have  passed  and  softened  the 
sharp  lines,  I  will  write  account  of  that 
unique  adventure. 

We  were  one  day,  as  was  our  wont,  hunt- 
ing in  old  Narragansett  for  ancient  china  and 
colonial  furniture,  but  even  on  that  historic 
and  early-settled  ground  had  met  with  scant 
success.  At  last,  on  an  out-of-the-way  road, 
was  found  a  clew. 

We  were  driving  slowly  along,  when  the 
door  of  a  long,  low  wood -shed  opened,  and 
an  elderly  man  walked  out  on  the  single 
broad  stone  step  and  stood,  in  the  lazy 
country  fashion,  staring  openly  and  sociably 
at  us  as  we  passed  by.  He  had  in  one  hand 
a  piece  of  dark  wood  which  he  was  slowly 
rubbing  with  sand-paper.  We  had  driven 


154  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

past  his  door  when  my  companion  suddenly 
exclaimed  :  "  That  man  had  a  claw-foot." 

"A  claw-foot  !"  I  answered  in  astonish- 
ment ;  "  what  do  you  mean  ? — a  cloven  foot 
or  a  club-foot,  perhaps  ?  ' ' 

"No,  you  goose;  that  man  had  in  his 
hand  a  claw-foot — the  leg  of  a  chair,  I  am 
sure,  and  I  am  going  back  to  see  to  what  it 
belongs." 

So  we  whisked  the  pony  around  and  drove 
to  the  door  where  the  claw-footed  man  still 
stood,  and  we  then  saw  in  the  one  dingy 
window  a  smal1  sign  bearing  the  words 


ELAM   CHADSEY 
GENERAL  REPAIRER 


"Are  you  Mr.  Chadsey  ? "  my  fellow 
china-hunter  asked.  "We  saw  you  with 
something  that  looked  old-fashioned  in  your 
hand,  and  we  thought  you  might  have  or 
know  of  some  antique  furniture  or  old 
crockery  that  the  owners  would  be  willing  to 
sell." 

"  Wai,  I  ain't  got  any  to  sell ;  I  only  mend 
furnitoor.  I've  got  a  couple  of  tall  clocks 
in  here  repairin',  but  they  ain't  mine,  so  I 


MY  DELFT   APOTHECARY  JARS       155 

can't  sell  'em.  N-o — I  don't  know  of  none 
— except —  What  furnitoor  do  you  want  ? ' ' 

"  Oh,  anything,  almost,  that  is  old,  and 
china  especially ;  any  old  blue  pie-plates  or 
such  things." 

Elam  stood  slowly  rubbing  his  claw -foot 
and  at  last  answered:  "  I  know  some  old 
blue-and-white  crockery  preserve-jars,  or 
jell-pots,  ye  might  call  'em,  which  I  ruther 
think  ye  could  get  ef  ye  want  'em.  Ye 
see,  Abiel  Hartshorn,  he's  a  widower  an'  he's 
a-goin'  ter  marry  a  school-marm  up  ter  Col- 
lation Corners,  an'  she's  got  awful  highty- 
tighty  notions,  an'  he's  a-goin'  ter  sell  the 
farm,  an'  she  come  down  ter  see  what  things 
she  wanted  saved  out  of  the  house  fur  her. 
An'  Abiel' s  fust  wife  she  had  all  these  old 
blue-an' -white  pots  with  letters  on  'em,  an' 
some  had  long  spouts,  an'  she  always  kep' 
her  preserves  an'  jelly  an'  sweet  pickles  in 
'em,  an'  mighty  handy  they  was  too.  An* 
when  this  woman  see  'em  she  was  real 
pleased  with  'em,  but  her  brother  was  along 
with  her,  and  he's  a  clerk  in  a  drug-store, 
an'  he  bust  out  a-larfin',  an'  says  he: 
'  Them  letters  on  them  jell-pots  means  sen- 
na, an'  jalap,  an'  calomel,  an'  sweet  syrup 
of  buckthorn,  an'  lixypro,  an'  lixylutis,  an'  all 


I  $6  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

sorts  of  bad-tastin'  medicines. '  An1  then  she 
fired  right  up,  an'  says  she  :  '  I  won't  have 
any  of  my  preserves  kep'  in  them  horrid- 
tastin'  old  medicine-bottles ; '  so  I  guess 
Abiel  would  be  glad  enough  ter  sell  'em  fur 
most  anything. ' ' 

We  suspected  at  once  that  these  "jell- 
pots  ' '  with  blue  lettering  of  the  names  of 
drugs  were  Delft  apothecary  jars,  and  that 
the  "  ones  with  spouts  ' '  were  the  old  jars,  so 
rarely  seen,  that  are  identical  in  shape  with 
the  "  siroop-pots  "  of  Dutch  museums. 
When  the  Dutch  used  these  jars  a  century  or 
more  ago,  they  covered  the  open  top  with 
tightly  tied  oilskin  and  poured  the  contents 
from  the  spout,  which  at  other  times  was 
kept  carefully  corked.  By  what  strange, 
roundabout  journey  had  these  Delft  jars 
strayed  to  that  New  England  farm?  We 
asked  eagerly  where  we  could  see  the  de- 
spised "jell -pots." 

"  Abiel's  house  is  about  two  mile  from 
here  by  the  road.  I  tell  ye  what  ye  can  do. 
Ye  may  as  well  see  'em  now's  ever.  I'll 
walk  cross-lots  an'  you  drive  there.  Go  on 
down  the  road  a  piece  an'  turn  the  fust  road 
ter  the  right.  'Tain't  much  of  a  road — it's 
kind  of  a  lane.  Go  on  to  the  fust  house  ye 


MY  DELFT   APOTHECARY  JARS       157 

come  to.  I'd  better  come,  'cause  mebbe  Abiel 
wouldn't  let  ye  see  'em  ef  ye  went  alone." 

We  left  him  and  drove  on  and  down 
through  the  narrow,  grass-grown  lane.  When 
we  reached  the  old  gray  farm-house  we  found 
it  deserted  and  still,  so  we  sat  down  on  the 
stone  doorstep  and  waited  for  Elam  Chadsey, 
and  soon  he  climbed  over  the  stone  wall  be- 
fore us. 

"  Ain't  Abiel  at  hum?  All  the  better! 
We'll  go  in  'n'  see  the  preserve-jars,  an' 
then  he  won't  know  any  city  folks  want  'em 
an'  won't  put  the  price  up  on  ye." 

He  prowled  around  the  house,  trying  in 
vain  to  open  first  the  doors  and  then  the 
windows,  but  to  his  amazement  he  found  all 
carefully  locked. 

"  The  ninny  !"  he  said,  indignantly,  "  he 
ain't  got  nothin'  to  steal !  What  did  he 
lock  up  fur  ?  I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing 
— lockin'  up  in  the  daytime;  it  makes  me 
mad.  The  dresser  Stan's  right  in  that  room 
and  them  jars  is  on  top  of  it ;  ef  ye  could 
only  see  in  that  window  ye  could  look  right 
at  it,  then  ye'd  know  whether  ye  wanted 
'em  or  not." 

"Isn't  there  anything  I  could  climb  up 
on?"  doubtfully  I  asked. 


158  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

He  searched  in  the  wood-shed  for  a  ladder, 
but  with  no  success.  At  last  he  called  out : 
"  I  guess  ef  you  two' 11  help  me  a  little  we 
can  pull  this  around  fur  ye  to  stand  on." 

"This"  was  a  hen-coop  or  hen-house, 
evidently  in  present  use  as  a  hen-habitation. 
Its  sides  were  about  four  feet  high,  and  from 
them  ran  up  a  pointed  roof,  the  highest  peak 
of  which  was  about  five  feet  and  a  half  from 
the  ground. 

"There,"  he  exclaimed,  triumphantly,  as 
he  pushed  it  under  the  window,  "  ef  ye  can 
git  up  an'  stari'  on  that  ye  can  see  in. 
Then  " — vindictively — "  we'll  leave  it  here 
fur  Abiel  to  drag  back  himself,  to  pay  him 
fur  bein'  such  a  gump  as  to  lock  his  doors. 
I  guess  it'll  hold  ye,  ef  ye  are  pretty  hefty." 

I  may  as  well  state  the  annoying  fact  that 
to  be  "  pretty  hefty  "  is  a  great  drawback  in 
searches  after  "  antiques."  You  cannot 
climb  up  narrow,  steep  ladders  and  through 
square  holes  into  treasure-holding  attic -lofts, 
as  may  a  slender  antique-hunter.  You  must 
remain  patiently  below  and  let  her  shout 
down,  telling  and  describing  what  is  above. 
It  is  such  a  trial  to  an  explorer  to  have  to 
explore  by  proxy,  especially  when  you  know 
you  could  discover  more  than  anyone  else 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS       159 

could.  I  determined  that  "  heft  "  should 
be  no  obstacle  to  me  in  this  case,  though  the 
hen-house  did  look  rather  steep  and  high ; 
and  I  bravely  started  to  climb.  I  placed 
one  knee,  then  the  other,  and  then  my  feet 
upon  the  ledge  at  the  edge  of  the  roof,  while 
Elam  Chadsey  pushed.  He  weighed  about 
one  hundred  pounds,  and  was  thin,  wizened, 
and  wrinkled  to  the  last  New  England  de- 
gree. He  braced  his  feet  firmly  in  the 
ground,  set  his  teeth,  and  pushed  with  might 
and  main.  Alone  I  scaled  the  second  height. 
I  had  barely  set  my  feet  firmly  on  the  peak 
of  the  roof,  had  shaded  my  eyes  from  the 
sunlight  with  one  hand,  while  I  clung  to  the 
window-frame  with  the  other,  had  caught 
one  glimpse  of  a  row  of  blue-and-white 
apothecary  jars,  when  —  crack!  —  smash! 
went  the  frail  roof  under  my  feet,  and  down 
I  went — down  into  the  hen-house  ! 

In  spite  of  my  distress  of  mind  and  my  dis- 
comfort of  body,  one  impression  overwhelmed 
all  others — the  anguish  and  consternation  of 
Elam  Chadsey.  He  darted  from  side  to 
side,  exactly  like  a  distracted  hen ;  he  liter- 
ally groaned  aloud. 

"  Darn  that  gump  of  an  Abiel  Hartshorn  ! 
He's  the  biggest  fool  in  Rhode  Island — 


160  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

lockin'  up  his  house  jest  'cause  he's  goin* 
away,  an'  gettin'  us  in  this  fix.  Wait,  miss, 
keep  still,  an'  I'll  see  if  I  can  find  an  axe  to 
chop  ye  out. ' ' 

Wait !  keep  still ! — indeed  I  would — I 
couldn't  do  otherwise.  Off  he  ran  to  the 
wood-shed,  and  soon  came  back  madder 
than  ever  ;  he  fairly  sizzled. 

"Oh,  the  ninny!  the  big  donkey!  his 
axe  is  in  the  house.  What  do  you  s'pose  he 
locked  it  up  fur?  He's  a  reg'lar  wood- 
chuck  !  I'll  tell  him  what  I  think  on  him. 
Ye  ain't  hurted  much,  be  ye,  miss?" 

"  Oh,  no,"  I  answered,  calmly,  "I'm  all 
right  as  long  as  I  keep  still.  But  if  I  try  to 
move  there  are  several  big  and  very  sharp 
splinters  that  stick  into  me,  and  nails,  too, 
I  think — rusty  nails,  without  doubt,  which 
will  probably  give  me  the  lock-jaw.  Oh, 
Mr.  Chadsey,  do  you  suppose  there  are 
many  eggs  in  this  house  ?  " 

'  <  Not  many  hull  ones,  F 11  bet.  Oh,  no  ' ' 
— very  scornfully — "  I  s'pose  Abiel  took  'em 
into  the  house  to  lock  'em  up — the  ninny. 
He's  the  biggest  ninny  I  ever  see.  Do  ye 
think,  miss,  if  we  could  manage  to  tip  the 
hen-house  over,  that  we  could  drag  you 
out?  " 


MY  DELFT  APpTHECARY  JARS       161 

* '  No, ' '  I  answered,  vehemently, « « the  splin- 
ters are  all  pointing  downward,  and  if  you 
try  to  pull  me  out  they  will  all  stick  into  me 
worse  than  they  do  now.  I  have  got  to  be 
chopped  out  of  this  trap,  and  you  must  go 
home,  or  somewhere,  or  anywhere,  and  get 
an  axe  to  do  it.  Take  our  horse,  and  drive 
there,  and  do  be  careful  when  you  go  around 
the  corners,  or  the  cart  will  upset — and  do, 
oh,  do  hurry.  You  must  both  go,  our  pony 
is  so  queer  and  tricky,  and  Mr.  Chadsey 
might  have  trouble  with  him.  Now,  don't 
object,  nothing  can  happen  to  me  in  my 
fortress. ' ' 

So,  rather  unwillingly,  they  drove  off, 
Elam  Chadsey  muttering  to  himself,  "that 
Abiel  Hartshorn's  the  biggest  ninny  in 
Rhode  Island." 

I  was  alone  in  my  hen-house.  I  was  not 
at  all  uncomfortable — while  I  kept  still — 
though  I  was  "  cabin'd,  cribb'd,  confin'd." 
The  true  china-hunting  madness  filled  my 
brain  as  I  thought  of  the  row  of  fine  blue- 
and-white  apothecary  jars  which  would  soon 
be  mine,  and  other  thoughts  were  crowded 
out.  The  calm  and  quiet  of  the  beautiful 
day  also  soothed  and  cheered  me  in  spite  of 
myself.  The  wind  sighed  musically  through 


162  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

the  great  ancient  pine-tree  that  stood  near 
the  house.  Flickering  rays  of  glowing  sun- 
light shone  down  on  my  head  through  the 
feathery  foliage  of  the  locust-trees  that  filled 
the  door-yard.  A  great  field  of  blossoming 
buckwheat  wafted  fresh  balm  in  little  puffs  of 
pure  perfume.  Bees  hummed  and  buzzed 
around  me,  and  a  meadow-lark  sung  some- 
where near,  sung  and  sung  as  if  summer  were 
eternal.  A  flood  of  light  and  perfume  and 
melody  and  warmth  filled  me  with  sensuous 
delight  in  spite  of  my  awkward  imprison- 
ment, and  I  fairly  laughed  aloud,  and  fright- 
ened the  hens  and  chickens  that  had  come 
clucking  round  me  in  inquisitive  wonder  at 
the  removal  and  invasion  of  their  home. 

But  my  ill-timed  and  absurd  sense  of  being 
in  a  summer  paradise  did  not  last  long,  for  I 
heard  in  a  few  minutes  the  loud  clatter  of 
wheels  coming  down  the  lane  from  the  op- 
posite direction  to  that  which  had  been 
taken  by  the  hurrying  pair.  Of  course,  I 
could  not  see,  for  I  had  fallen  with  my  face 
toward  the  house,  and  I  did  not  like  to  try 
to  turn  around — it  inconvenienced  the  splin- 
ters so.  The  sound  came  nearer  and  nearer, 
and  at  last  I  managed  to  move  my  head 
enough  to  see  a  country  horse  and  wagon 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS       163 

with  two  men.  Then  I  leaned  my  face  on 
my  folded  arms,  and  I  hoped  and  prayed 
that  they  might  drive  past.  But,  to  my  hor- 
ror, to  my  intense  mortification,  they  turned 
and  came  up  the  driveway  and  underneath 
the  shed  of  the  Hartshorn  house. 

A  great  dog  bounded  around  and  stared 
at  me.  I  heard  around  the  corner  the  mur- 
muring sounds  of  suppressed  laughter  and 
eager  questioning,  of  which  one  sentence 
only  came  distinctly  to  my  ears  :  "  Queer 
sort  of  hens  you  keep,  Hartshorn ; ' '  and 
then  the  two  men  came  round  the  house. 

I  hardly  know  what  I  said  ;  I  think  it  was 
this:  "If  you  are  Mr.  Hartshorn,  I  must 
beg  your  pardon  for  my  sudden,  imperti- 
nent, and  most  unexpected  intrusion  on  the 
privacy  of  your — hen-house  ' '  (here  we  all 
three  burst  out  laughing),  "and  I  must  ask 
if  you  will  please  get  your  axe  and  chop  up 
your  own  hen-house  in  order  to  get  me  out." 

Never  speak  to  me  again  of  Yankee  inquis- 
itiveness !  Without  asking  one  question, 
Hartshorn  ran  into  the  house,  brought  out 
his  hidden  axe,  and  while  the  boards  were 
firmly  held  by  the  other  man  (who,  alas ! 
was  young  and  well-dressed,  and  who  proved 
to  be  the  city  purchaser  of  the  farm),  Abiel 


1 64  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

carefully  chopped  and  split.  I  heroically 
bore  this  undignified  ordeal  in  silence,  until 
at  last  I  was  released. 

"  Come  into  the  house,"  said  Abiel,  with 
wonderful  hospitality  to  so  impertinent  an 
intruder ;  "ye  must •  be  a  leetle  tired  of 
standin';  come  in  and  sit  down.  Ye  ain't 
hurt  much,  air  ye  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no,"  I  answered,  "  only  some  deep 
scratches;  but  let  me  explain  to  you" — and 
I  did  explain  with  much  self-abasement  how 
I  came  to  be  fixed  in  my  absurd  position. 

In  the  meantime  the  distracted  pair  had 
obtained  the  axe  and  were  on  their  way  back 
to  the  scene  of  disaster.  As  soon  as  they 
were  within  a  full  view  of  the  house  my  com- 
panion china-hunter  burst  forth:  "Why, 
she  is  gone  !  Where  can  she  be  ?  Do  you 
suppose  she  has  fainted  and  sunk  into  the 
hen-house  ?  No,  I  can  see,  it  is  empty ;  she 
has  got  out  of  it  somehow."  Then  she 
jumped  out  of  the  cart,  ran  up  the  path  and 
through  the  open  door,  and  found  me  sit- 
ting calmly  talking  with  the  well-dressed 
young  man. 

From  the  kitchen  we  soon  heard  sounds  of 
violent  and  vituperative  altercation.  , 

"  Abiel  Hartshorn,  yer  the  biggest  fool  I 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS       165 

ever  see.  What  did  ye  lock  yer  house  up  in 
the  daytime  fur  ?  " 

"  To  keep  out  jest  such  pryin'  haddocks 
as  you  and  them  be. ' ' 

"Ye  ain't  got  nothin'  in  it,  anyway." 

"Then  what  did  you  and  her  want  to 
peek  in  fur  ?  " 

"Such  a  rotten  old  hen-house  I  never 
see." 

"  'Tain't  made  as  a  platform  fur  to  hold 
a  woman  of  her  size." 

"  She  don't  weigh  much." 

"  She  do,  too.  Ye  ain't  no  judge  of  heft, 
Elam  ;  ye  don't  weigh  enough  yerself." 

"  What  did  yer  lock  up  yer  axe  fur?" 

"  Ef  I'd  a-knowed  yer'd  a- wan  ted  it  so 
bad,  I'd  a-perlitely  left  it  out  fur  ye." 

"Wai,  I  never  heard  of  sech  a  thing  as 
lockin'  up  a  house  in  the  daytime,  and  yer 
axe,  too — how  could  ye  be  such  a  fool? 
Say,  Abiel,  she  looked  funny  though,  didn't 
she?" 

All's  well  that  ends  well.  Abiel,  having 
sold  the  farm,  was  glad  to  sell  the  roofless 
hen-house  for  two  dollars,  and  he  eagerly 
gave  me  the  drug-pots.  The  former  antique 
was  never  claimed,  and  the  blue-and-white 
jars  proved  for  many  months  too  painful  and 


1 66  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

too  hateful  a  reminder  to  have  in  sight. 
Now  they  stand  on  table  and  shelf — pretty 
posy -holders,  but  severe  and  unceasing  moni- 
tors. Their  clear  blue  letters — "  Succ :  E, 
Spin  :  C,"  and  "  U  :  Althae,"  and  "  C  :  Ro- 
sar:  R,"  etc. — speak  not  to  me  of  drugs 
and  syrups,  of  lohocks  and  electuaries  ;  they 
are  abbreviations  of  various  Biblical  prov- 
erbs such  as  ' '  Every  fool  will  be  med- 
dling," "  He  taketh  the  wise  in  their  own 
craftiness, "  "  Boast  not  thyself  of  to-morrow, 
for  thou  knowest  not  what  a  day  may  bring 
forth,"  "  Let  him  that  thinketh  he  standeth 
take  heed  lest  he  fall,"  etc.  And  the  little 
ill-drawn  blue  cherubs  that  further  decorate 
the  drug-pots  seem  always  to  wink  and  to 
smirk  maliciously  at  me,  and  to  hold  their 
fat  sides  as  though  they  were  thinking  of  the 
first  time  they  peeped  at  me  and  jeered  at 
me  out  of  the  window  of  the  gray  old  farm- 
house as  I  stood  entrapped  in  my  meddle- 
some folly  in  the  sunlight  under  the  beauti- 
ful locust-trees  in  old  Narragansett. 

I  cannot  tell  a  romantic  story  of  a  further 
acquaintance  with  the  good-looking  young 
man ;  I  never  saw  him  again,  and  I  am  sure 
I  never  want  to.  Still,  I  know,  ah,  too  well 
I  know,  that  he  often  thinks  of  me.  On  that 


MY  DELFT  APOTHECARY  JARS        167 

susceptible  masculine  heart  I  made  an  im- 
pression at  first  sight.  When  he  welcomes 
visitors  to  his  country-home  I  know  he  often 
speaks  of  his  first  glimpse  of  the  house — and 
of  me.  'Tis  pleasant  to  feel  my  memory 
will  ever  bring  to  one  face  a  cheerful  smile, 
and  furnish  a  never-failing  "  good  story  " — 
nay,  to  three,  for  I  know  that  Elam  Chadsey 
and  Abiel  Hartshorn  both  keep  my  memory 
green;  that  to  them  my  mishap  was  "argu- 
ment for  a  week,  laughter  for  a  month,  and 
a  good  jest  forever. ' ' 


THE  DANCING  TURKEY 


THE  DANCING  TURKEY 

IN  the  States  Papers  office  in  London  is  a 
(i  propper  ballad  "  entitled  a  "  Sommons  to 
New  England,"  which  was  written  about 
1680.  It  alluringly  recites  natural  con- 
ditions in  the  colonies.  One  verse  runs 
thus  : 

' '  There  flights  of  foules  doe  cloud  the  light, 
Of  turkies  three  score  pound  in  weight 
As  bigg  as  ostridges." 

All  the  early  travellers  in  America  con- 
firm the  vast  weight  of  these  wild  turkeys — 
Josselyn  said  sixty  pounds.  The  turkey  has 
not  grown  larger  by  domestication,  the  wild 
birds  are  still  finer  and  more  beautiful  than 
the  tame  ones.  All  foreign  epicures  agree 
that  American  turkeys  are  the  best  in  the 
world.  In  America  we  make  fine  distinc- 
tions, even  in  American  turkeys  ;  tastes  dif- 
fer with  localities.  In  some  northern  States 
no  turkey  is  perfect  unless  stuffed  with  chest- 
nuts— that  is,  as  food.  In  Louisiana  he  is 
171 


172  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

gorged  with  pecan-nuts.  In  South  Carolina 
raw  rice  is  your  only  prime  turkey-food. 
In  Virginia  wild  persimmons  give  the  turkey 
a  tang  that  gilds  refined  gold.  The  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States,  whoever  he  may 
be,  feasts  every  Thanksgiving  Day  on  a  Nar- 
ragansett  turkey  fattened  on  Narragansett 
grasshoppers — and  I  approve  the  President's 
taste. 

These  Presidential  turkeys,  though  great 
and  fat,  are  not  "as  bigg  as  ostridges;  " 
but  a  Narragansett  turkey  with  whom  I  was 
acquainted — as  Rosa  Bonheur  would  say — 
fairly  rivalled  his  ancestors  of  colonial 
days. 

His  name  was  Launcelot  Gobbo  ;  he  was 
born,  or  rather  hatched,  on  a  Narragansett 
farm.  He  was  the  joint  property  of  Bill 
and  Ralph  Prime,  two  farmer's  sons,  four- 
teen and  fifteen  years  of  age,  who,  according 
to  the  good  old  fashion  in  the  Prime  family, 
were  given  each  year  some  portion  of  the 
farm  stock — a  cosset  lamb,  a  brood  of  chick- 
ens, a  pig,  a  cote  of  pigeons — to  rear  and 
sell,  or  keep  as  their  very  own.  This  year 
their  share  of  the  farm-products  was  Launce- 
lot Gobbo  and  his  mate.  His  name  was 
given  him  by  the  village  school-teacher,  a 


THE  DANCING  TURKEY  173 

young  college  student  who  chanced  to  come 
frequently  to  call  on  the  boy's  sister,  Mary 
Prime.  Gobbo  was  chosen  as  their  handsel 
because  he  was  such  a  mammoth  turkey- 
chick,  a  nine-days' -old  wonder ;  and  by 
tender  cherishing  he  had  fulfilled  the  great 
promise  of  his  youth. 

This  great  size  had  been  aided  by  careful 
feeding,  on  a  composite  diet,  of  Narragan- 
sett  fashion,  extended  by  Oriental  suggestion. 
His  first  food  was  such  as  all  well-reared 
Narragansett  turkeys  have,  milk  curdled  with 
rennet,  by  which  the  gasps  and  stomach- 
ache so  fatal  to  turkey  infancy  were  avoided. 
Then  carne  the  natural  food-supply  of  grass- 
hoppers and  Rhode  Island  whole  corn.  The 
Prime  boys  had  few  books  to  read ;  among 
them  were  several  dry  and  colorless  memoirs 
of  sainted  missionaries  to  the  East.  There 
was  one  nutritious  kernel,  however,  in  one 
of  these  rustling  husks  of  books ;  it  was  an 
account  of  the  preparation  of  locusts  as  food, 
the  roasting,  frying,  and  drying  them  for 
grinding  them  into  meal.  Bill  Prime  was 
an  inventive  genius,  a  true  Yankee,  ever 
ready  to  take  a  hint ;  moreover,  he  was  ani- 
mated by  sincere  affection  for  his  pet,  and 
pride  in  his  size ;  and  as  he  read  the  meagre 


174  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

missionary  accounts  he  conceived  the  notion 
of  supplying  Gobbo  with  his  dearly  loved 
grasshoppers  after  autumnal  winds  had 
chilled  and  cleared  the  fields  of  vegetable 
and  insect  life. 

It  was  not  as  easy  a  task  to  catch  and  dry 
these  American  grasshoppers  as  Oriental 
locusts,  but  love  laughs  at  limitations ;  just 
as  Gobbo  laughed  when  his  daily  dole  of 
grasshoppers  was  dealt  out  to  him  on  chill 
October  and  November  mornings,  with  the 
Tallman  sweetings  that  formed  his  dessert. 
"Laugh  and  grow  fat  "is  the  old  saying; 
and  as  Gobbo  laughed  he  also  grew  fat,  and 
he  waxed  taller  and  taller.  Ralph  thought 
Gobbo  weighed  thirty  pounds ;  Bill  set  the 
weight  at  least  five  pounds  higher.  As  the 
turkey  was  full  and  rich  of  feather  he  looked 
to  me  twice  as  large  as  any  other  I  had 
ever  seen ;  really  big  enough  to  reach  the 
seventeenth-century  standard  of  "  three  score 
pound  in  weight." 

But  Gobbo  had  other  claims  to  consider- 
ation besides  his  size  or  his  distinguished 
name;  he  was  an  accomplished  turkey — a 
trick-performer.  Like  Shakespeare's  famous 
Gobbo  for  whom  he  was  named,  he  ' '  used 
his  heels  at  his  master's  commands. ' '  When 


THE  DANCING   TURKEY  175 

Bill  struck  the  ground  near  him  with  a  stick 
and  called  out  ' '  Dance,  Gobbo,  dance  for 
the  ladies,"  and  set  up  a  shrill  fife-like 
whistle,  Gobbo  spread  his  great  fan-like  tail, 
and  nodded  and  bowed  his  head,  and  cir- 
cled and  hopped  around  in  exact  time  with 
the  rapping  of  the  stick,  in  the  most  pom- 
pous, ridiculous,  mirth-provoking  caricature 
of  a  dance  that  ever  was  footed  or  clawed. 
He  posed  before  the  whole  town  as  a  show- 
bird.  Stolid  Narragansett  farmers  and  fish- 
ermen for  miles  around  came  to  see  him, 
and  roared  aloud  at  his  dancing,  which  he 
had  to  exhibit  every  day  in  the  week.  Even 
on  Sunday,  at  the  nooning,  Bill  proudly  but 
secretly  led  the  neighbors'  boys  home  to  the 
farm  and  behind  the  barn ;  though  the  dea- 
con sternly  frowned  on  a  Sunday  dance, 
even  by  a  turkey  who  had  no  soul  to  be 
saved. 

It  was  the  second  week'of  November ;  Gob- 
bo was  still  growing  and  still  dancing,  when 
one  day  a  gayly  painted  vehicle  with  a  smart 
horse  came  dashing  into  town.  The  wagon 
had  an  enclosed  box  behind  the  chaise  front. 
It  might  be  taken  for  a  peddler's  cart  or  a 
patent-medicine  coach,  but  it  was  neither ; 
it  was  the  collecting- van  of  a  Boston  "an- 


176  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

tique-man. ' '  Persuasive,  smiling,  flattering, 
peering  into  every  kitchen,  cupboard,  and 
dresser,  in  every  parlor  closet,  in  every  bed- 
room and  gabled  attic,  he  gathered  in  his 
lucrative  autumnal  harvest  of  brass  andirons 
and  candlesticks,  of  old  blue  dishes  and  cop- 
per lustre  pitchers,  of  harp-back  chairs  and 
spinning-wheels.  He  debonnairly  purchased 
two  pewter  porringers,  a  sampler,  and  an  old 
mirror  of  Mrs.  Prime,  while  he  effusively 
praised  the  farm  and  the  cattle.  And  as  he 
partook  of  the  apples  and  cider  generously 
set  before  him,  he  shouted  with  laughter  at 
Gobbo,  who  proudly  danced  for  him  again 
and  again.  As  the  early  twilight  began  to 
lower,  the  "antique-man"  called  out  a 
cheerful  good-night  and  drove  away.  Gobbo 
also  stalked  off — and  forever — from  the 
Prime  door-yard,  for  in  the  morning  he  had 
vanished  from  the  farm  as  completely  as  if  he 
had  evaporated. 

How  the  boys  stormed  and  mourned  !  how 
fiercely  they  descended  on  the  "colored" 
Johnsons,  more  than  suspected  in  the  past  of 
chicken  -  stealing !  how  they  hunted  the 
woods  and  meadows  !  how  they  fretted  and 
fumed  ! — but  to  no  avail.  To  check  their 
worry  and  anger,  their  mother  sent  them  off 


THE  DANCING  TURKEY  177 

to  Boston  to  spend  Thanksgiving  week  with 
their  married  sister. 

With  the  sea-loving  curiosity  of  all  boys, 
they  haunted  the  wharves  and  lower  portions 
of  the  city,  and  on  the  day  before  Thanks- 
giving, as  they  wandered  up  from  the  docks 
through  a  crowded  and  noisy  street,  they 
joined  a  little  group  gathered  around  the 
show-window  of  a  '  <  dime  musee, ' '  for  in  the 
window  stood  as  a  lure,  a  promise  of  treasures 
and  wonders  within,  an  enormous  turkey, 
penned  in  a  wire  coop,  drooping  of  feather, 
and  listlessly  feeding. 

"  He  isn't  nearly  as  big  as  Gobbo,"  said 
Bill,  contemptuously.  "Not  much,"  an- 
swered Ralph ;  but  even  as  they  spoke  there 
gathered  in  their  questioning  brains,  in  their 
eager  eyes,  a  conviction  which  burst  forth 
from  their  lips:  "  It  is  Gobbo  !  " 

Now  they  were  Yankee  boys,  slow  but 
shrewd,  and  they  knew  every  feather  of  the 
wings,  every  fold  of  the  comb  and  wattle 
of  their  pet ;  but  each  paid  his  dime  and 
entered  the  museum  to  be  sure.  Past  the 
voluble  showman,  the  wax  figures,  the 
stuffed  animals,  they  silently  strolled  to  the 
window.  No  one  else  stood  near  within 
doors.  "  Dance,  Gobbo,  dance  for  the 


178  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ladies  !  "  cried  Bill,  excitedly,  striking  the 
floor  with  his  cane,  and  his  heart  beat  high. 
Oh !  how  the  crowd  outside  on  the  street 
laughed  as  Gobbo  spread  his  tail  and  danced 
"most  high  and  disposedly,"  as  the  French 
ambassador  said  of  Queen  Elizabeth  in  the 
gavotte. 

A  great  printed  card  hung  over  Gobbo' s 
pen  ;  he  was  to  be  raffled  that  very  night. 
Made  suspicious  by  fraud,  the  boys  scarcely 
dared  leave  the  hall  even  for  food,  but  with 
the  instinctive  good  sense  of  many  of  coun- 
try birth,  Bill  interviewed  a  friendly  police- 
man on  the  beat,  and  another  policeman  ap- 
peared at  the  raffling  at  eight  o'clock  and  sat 
near  the  Prime  boys  on  the  front  row  of 
seats  in  the  hall. 

At  the  appointed  hour  a  noisy  but  not  dis- 
orderly crowd  had  gathered.  The  master  of 
ceremonies  removed  the  wire  netting  from 
around  Gobbo,  who  was  still  feeding  and 
still  fattening.  The  showman  entreated  si- 
lence, and  in  a  reasonable  stillness  began  : 
"Gentlemen,  this  magnificent  turkey,  the 
biggest  ever  known  in  the  civilized  world, 
the  feathered  monarch  of  the  ornithological 
world,  will —  "when  a  shrill  whistle  pierced 
the  air,  and  "Dance,  Gobbo,  dance  for  the 


THE  DANCING  TURKEY  179 

ladies  !  ' '  was  roared  out.  The  turkey  reared 
his  long  neck  and  head  like  a  snake,  and  with 
a  piercing  gobble  literally  flew  from  the  plat- 
form to  his  friend  Bill,  with  a  force  that 
almost  stunned  the  boy.  The  showman 
advanced  :  ' '  What  does  this  mean  ?  "  he 
shouted.  ' '  Don' t  you  touch  him, f '  screamed 
Bill,  and  "  Don't  you  touch  him,"  confirmed 
with  emphasis  the  policeman,  while  Ralph 
explained  to  the  inquisitive  and  sympathiz- 
ing 'longshoremen  and  sailors  who  crowded 
around  him,  how  the  turkey  had  been  lost 
and  found ;  not  without  some  bitter  asper- 
sions on  the  character  of  the  antique-man. 

An  adjourned  meeting  was  held  at  the 
police-station  the  following  morning,  when 
the  Prime  boys  testified  and  Gobbo  danced, 
and  a  gay  session  it  was  in  those  dingy 
rooms;  and  the  showman  with  a  sham  good- 
humor  resigned  his  claims  to  what  had 
proved  to  him  a  very  lucrative  drawing-card. 

There  ought  to  be  a  romantic  ending  to 
this  tale  of  a  lost  love;  but  every  turkey  has 
his  day,  and  this  was  Gobbo's.  He  was  too 
big  to  keep  in  a  city  yard,  and  too  big  to 
take  home  in  the  cars ;  thus  did  his  great- 
ness, as  did  Cardinal  Wolsey's,  prove  his 
destruction.  Even  his  accomplishments 


i8o  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

were  a  snare;  for  when  it  was  known  he 
could  dance,  his  talent  could  not  be  hidden 
under  a  bushel  in  obscure  country-life.  He 
had  ever  been  destined  for  a  city  market, 
and  soon  again  he  graced  a  window,  this 
time  of  a  great  city  poulterer ;  and  on  the 
eve  of  Thanksgiving  he  was  again  raffled — 
the  second  time,  alas  !  with  hanging  wings, 
and  plucked  sides,  and  drooping  head. 


CUDDYMONK'S   GHOST 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST 

BLACK  CUDDYMONK  and  his  wife  Rosann 
were  holding  an  animated  discussion  as 
they  sat  before  the  fire  in  their  cheerful 
kitchen  in  old  Narragansett.  That  is, 
Cuddymonk  was  talking  loudly  and  effu- 
sively, while  Rosann  said  little,  but  said 
it  firmly;  and  in  the  end  succeeded  in  hav- 
ing her  own  way,  as  such  stubborn,  talk- 
less  persons  usually  do,  whether  they  be. 
black  or  white.  Cuddy  had  had  an  offer 
of  employment  for  a  month,  and  he  was  un- 
willing to  accept  the  position  and  do  the 
work ;  but  Rosann  calmly  overruled  him  and 
he  had  to  yield.  It  was  not  that  the  work 
was  hard,  or  that  the  pay  was  poor,  but 
simply  that  Cuddy  was  afraid,  he  was  too 
superstitious  to  dare  to  face  the  terrors  that 
the  performance  of  his  duties  might  bring 
forth.  And  yet  it  seemed  simple  enough  ! 
Old  Dr.  Greene  had  the  rheumatism  and 
could  not  hold  the  reins  to  drive,  and  he 
183 


1 84  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

wanted  to  hire  Cuddy  to  drive  in  his  chaise 
with  him  when  he  went  on  his  daily  round 
of  visits,  and  to  care  for  the  horse  when  he 
returned  home.  Cuddy  would  have  loved 
to  feed  and  rub  down  the  horse,  and  drive 
through  the  sunny  lanes  and  green  woods, 
and  sit  in  the  sun  while  the  Doctor  visited 
and  dosed  and  bled  within  doors.  It  would 
be  like  making  a  round  of  visits  himself,  for 
he  was  then  "Black  Gov'nor,"  and  at 
every  house  in  village  or  on  farm  he  would 
find  some  friend  or  constituent  to  chat  and 
gossip  with.  But  alas !  all  the  Doctor's 
visits  were  not  made  in  the  daytime,  and 
Cuddy  shrank  from  the  thought  of  driving 
all  over  Narragansett  in  the  night.  He 
thus  complained  to  Rosann :  "I  wouldn't 
care  if  it  warn't  for  dem  darminted  grave- 
yards. Dere's  a  graveyard  on  ebery  farm 
all  ober  dis  country.  I  nebber  see  sech 
fools  es  folks  is  in  Narragansett.  Dey 
warnts  ter  hab  ghosts  ebberywhere.  Why 
don't  dey  keep  'em  all  inde  ole  church-yard 
ober  ter  Fender  Zeke's  corner,  den  yer  can 
go  de  road  dat  leads  round  de  udder  way, 
an*  not  meet  'em.  Down  Boston  way  dey 
buries  folks  in  church-yards  an'  keeps  der 
ghosts  where  dey  belongs. ' ' 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  185 

Cuddymonk  had  travelled,  and  knew  how 
things  should  be ;  he  had  ridden  to  Boston 
thirty  years  previously  with  Judge  Potter ; 
and  the  strange  sights  he  had  seen,  and  the 
new  ways  he  had  learned  at  that  metropolis, 
had  been  his  chief  stock-in-trade  ever  since, 
and,  indeed,  had  formed  one  of  his  great 
qualifications  for  election  as  Black  Governor. 

Rosann  answered  him  calmly  and  coldly  : 
"  I's  sick  er  ghosts,  Cuddymonk.  I'se 
been  mar'd  forty  year,  and  you's  a-talkin' 
about  ghosts  all  de  whole  during  time  an' 
a-speerin'  for  ghosts  all  dem  years,  an'  yer 
ain't  nebber  seed  one  yit.  You's  jess  got  ter 
go  ter  de  Doctor's  termorrer  an'  dribe  for 
him." 

"  Rosann,  when  yer  sees  me  brung  home 
a  ragin'  luniac  wid  misery  ob  de  head,  yer' 11 
wish  yer  hadn'  drove  yer  ole  man  erway  from 
yer  bed  'n'  b'ord  ter  go  foolin'  all  ober  de 
country  in  de  night-time,  seein'  ghosts  and 
sperits  an'  witches.  P'raps  I  sha'n't  nebber 
come  home  alibe,  anyway." 

"  You's  got  ter  go,  Cuddy,  an'  dar  ain't 
no  use  er  talkin'  'bout  it.  I  guess  de  ole 
Doctor  kin  charm  off  any  ghost  you'll  eber 
see.  'Sides,  he  won't  be  out  much  nights 
when  he  got  de  rheumatiz  ser  bad.  'Tain't 


1 86  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

ebry  day  yer  kin  git  yer  keep  an'  ten  dollars 
a  month,  an'  yer  ought  ter  dribe  fer  him 
anyway,  ter  'comerdate  him,  when  he  sabed 
yer  troo  de  bronchi ters." 

So  Cuddy  went  to  the  Doctor,  and  for  a 
week  all  was  well  with  him.  He  drove  to 
all  points  from  Wickford  to  Biscuit  Town, 
and  received  such  greeting  and  honor  from 
all  of  his  race  as  was  due  a  governor.  But 
an  end  came  to  all  this  content,  for  late 
on  a  misty,  miserable  September  after- 
noon young  Joe  Champlin  came  riding  up 
to  the  doctor's  door  in  great  speed,  and  in 
a  few  moments  the  Doctor  shouted  out  to 
Cuddy  to  harness  up  Peggy.  Cuddy  was 
wretched.  He  knew  well  where  the  Champ- 
lin farm  lay — far  up  on  Boston  Neck — and 
he  thought  with  keen  terror  of  the  lonely 
road,  of  the  many  little  enclosed  graveyards 
that  lay  between  him  and  the  Champlin 
homestead.  Fear  made  him  bold,  and  he 
managed  to  stammer  out  to  the  Doctor  the 
request  that  he  would  have  Joe  Champlin 
hitch  his  saddle-horse  behind  the  chaise  and 
drive  the  Doctor  to  the  farm,  where  horse 
and  chaise  and  doctor  could  remain  all  night ; 
then  he  (Cuddy)  would  walk  up  early  in  the 
morning  to  drive  back.  The  Doctor  scoffed 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  187 

at  the  ridiculous  proposition,  and  barely  gave 
Cuddy  time  ere  they  started  to  put  on  his 
coat  and  waistcoat  wrong  side  out — a  sure 
safeguard  against  ghosts.  As  they  drove  up 
Boston  Neck  in  the  misty  twilight  Cuddy 
suffered  keen  thrills  of  terror  whenever  he 
got  down  from  the  chaise  to  let  down  bars 
or  open  gates ;  for  the  only  roads  at  that 
time  in  that  region  of  Narragansett  were 
drift-ways  through  the  fields — well-travelled, 
to  be  sure — but  still  kept  closed  by  gates. 
Cuddy  clambered  in  and  out  of  the  chaise, 
and  opened  and  closed  the  gates  with  an 
agility  that  amazed  the  Doctor,  who  had  pre- 
viously had  frequent  occasions  in  the  day- 
time to  revile  him  for  his  laziness  in  like 
duties.  He  also  glanced  with  apprehension 
and  dread  at  the  family  burying-grounds  they 
passed,  counting  to  himself  the  whole  dreary 
number  that  would  have  to  be  repassed  on 
the  way  home. 

These  sad  little  resting-places  are  dotted 
all  over  Narragansett.  In  olden  times  each 
family  was  buried  in  some  corner  on  the 
family-farm.  Sometimes  the  burying-place 
was  enclosed  in  a  high  stone  wall;  often  they 
were  overgrown  with  great  pine  or  hemlock 
trees,  or  half-shaded  with  airy  locust-trees. 


i88  IN   OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

Ugly  little  gravestones  were  clustered  in  these 
family  resting-places — slate  head -stones  carved 
with  winged  cherub  heads  and  quaint  old 
names,  and  lists  of  the  virtues  of  the  lost 
ones;  and  all  the  simple  but  tender  stone- 
script  of  the  country  stone-cutter's  lore — 
hackneyed  but  loving  verses — repeated  on 
stone  after  stone.  Beautifully  ideal  is  the 
thought  and  reality  of  these  old  Narragan- 
sett  planters  and  their  wives  and  children 
resting  in  the  ground  they  loved  so  dearly, 
and  so  faithfully  worked  for.  But  there  was 
nothing  beautiful  in  the  thought  to  Cuddy ; 
he  groaned  as  he  passed  them,  and  thought 
of  his  midnight  return ;  and  he  tried  to  learn 
from  the  Doctor  how  long  he  would  probably 
be  detained  at  the  Champlin  farm.  But  Dr. 
Greene,  accustomed  to  ride  alone  for  hours 
through  the  country,  was  taciturn  and  gruff, 
and  kept  Cuddy  in  ignorance  of  both  the 
name  and  ailment  of  the  patient. 

When  they  reached  the  Champlin  farm 
Cuddy  ventured  to  say,  with  a  cheerful  as- 
sumption of  interest:  "'S'pose  you'll  stay 
here  all  night,  Doctor,  it's  so  cole  an'  damp 
an*  so  bad  fer  yer  rheumatiz.  I'll  sleep  in 
de  hay  in  de  barn  an'  won't  bodder  nobody. ' ' 

"No,    indeed,"    answered    the    Doctor, 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  189 

sharply,  "  we'll  start  back  in  half  an  hour." 
Cuddymonk  gloomily  hitched  and  blanketed 
the  horse,  and  walked  into  the  great  kitchen, 
where,  nodding  and  dozing,  sat  old  Ruth 
Champlin,  the  negro  cook.  When  Ruth  saw 
his  reversed  clothing,  she  did  not  dream  of 
smiling  at  his  absurd  appearance,  but  at  once 
sympathized  with  him  in  his  gloomy  forebod- 
ings ;  and  while  she  filled  him  with  metheg- 
lin — a  fermented  mead  made  of  water,  honey, 
and  locust-beans — she  also  filled  him  with 
fresh  stories  of  witches  and  ghosts  until  the 
time  came  to  start  on  the  homeward  drive, 
when  the  poor  "Black  Gov'nor's  "  nerves 
were  completely  unstrung. 

I  will  not  give  a  list  of  the  terrors  that 
assailed  Cuddy  from  the  first  moment  of  his 
ride  home.  A  rustling  leaf,  a  cracking  branch , 
a  sighing  wind,  were  magnified  into  groans 
and  wails.  Every  stone,  every  bush,  seemed 
an  uncanny  form  ;  every  cluster  of  blackberry 
bushes,  every  hay-rick,  a  looming  monster. 
And  when  Dr.  Greene  decided  to  return  by 
Fender  Zeke's  corner,  and  thus  pass  the  old 
church  foundation  of  the  Narragansett  Church 
and  its  cluster  of  deserted  gravestones,  Cuddy's 
terror  found  words. 

"  Don'  do  it,  Doctor ;  don'  go  by  dat  dar- 


190  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

minted  ole  church  foundashum.  It's  a  dreffle 
lonely  road,  an'  ebberybody  knows  dere's 
ghosts  in  dat  ole  church-yard  ebbery  night. 
Ole  Mum  Amey  seed  one  a-dancin'  on  ole 
Brenton's  table-stone.  Fer  de  lub  ob  praise, 
Doctor,  don*  less  go  dere  to-night.  Ole 
Tuggie  Bannocks  an'  all  dem  dashted  ole 
witches  gadders  in  de  ole  noon-house  dat 
Stan's  in  de  church- yard  an'  brews  dere  witch- 
broth  ;  an'  ef  anyone  sees  'em  a-brewin'  dey 
can  nebber  eat  nothin'  else,  an'  pines  away 
wid  misery  ob  de  stummick  an'  dies." 

The  Doctor  only  answered,  gruffly,  "Go 
by  the  corners,  Cuddy ;  I'll  drive  off  the 
ghost." 

As  they  approached  the  haunted  church- 
yard Cuddy  was  fairly  speechless  with  appre- 
hension. His  teeth  chattered,  and  he  held 
the  whip  in  one  trembling  hand  to  ward  off 
any  ghostly  or  witchly  attack.  Words  would 
fail  in  attempting  to  express  the  horror,  the 
agony,  which  seized  him,  which  overwhelmed 
him  when  he  saw  as  he  passed  the  old  noon- 
house  an  unearthly,  an  appalling,  object, 
which  he  could  not  bear  to  look  at,  nor 
could  he  force  his  staring  eyes  to  look  away 
from.  The  Doctor  saw  it,  too — a  tall  slender 
column,  about  seven  feet  in  height,  of  faintly 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  191 

shimmering  light  vaguely  outlining  a  robed 
figure,  not  of  a  human  being,  but  plainly  of 
a  ghost.  It  appeared  to  be  about  a  hundred 
feet  from  the  road,  though  it  could  be  clearly 
seen  through  the  mist,  and  it  seemed  palpi- 
tating with  a  faint,  uncanny  radiance.  "  Stop, 
Cuddy,"  eagerly  roared  the  Doctor,  "  I  want 
to  see  what  that  is  !  "  And  as  Cuddy  showed 
no  sign  of  stopping  the  horse's  progress,  he 
seized  the  reins  from  the  negro's  shaking 
hands.  Cuddy,  frightened  out  of  all  sense 
of  respect  or  deference,  shouted  out, 
"  G'lang,  git  up,"  and  attempted  to  whip 
the  steed. 

"  Cuddy,  you  black  imp !  if  you  dare  to 
do  that  again,  I'll  whip  you  within  an  inch 
of  your  life.  I'm  going  to  get  out  and  see 
what  that  is.  It  is  a  very  interesting  physical 
phenomenon." 

"Oh,  Doctor  dear,  you's  bewitched  a'ready. 
Dere  ain't  no  physic  about  dat,  it's  a  moon- 
ack.  Fer  de  lub  of  God,  don't  go  near  it — 
you'll  nebber  walk  out  alibe  " — and  with 
that  the  unhappy  black  man  fairly  burst  into 
tears  and  threw  his  restraining  arms  around 
the  Doctor's  neck. 

The  unheeding  Doctor  jumped  from  the 
side  of  the  chaise  with  a  force  that  nearly 


192  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

dragged  Cuddymonk  with  him.  The  weep- 
ing negro's  affection  and  interest  would 
carry  him  no  farther,  and  as  the  Doctor 
walked  sturdily  across  the  church-green, 
Cuddy,  moaning  and  groaning  in  despair, 
gathered  up  the  reins,  ready,  at  any  mo- 
tion or  sound  of  the  ghost,  to  start  the 
horse  down  the  road  and  wholly  desert  the 
Doctor. 

The  brave  ghost-investigator  walked  up 
the  four  narrow  stone  steps  that  once  led  to 
the  church  door — but  now,  alas  !  lead  sadly 
nowhere — then  turned  into  the  graveyard. 
As  he  stumbled  eagerly  along  through  the 
high  grass  and  tangled  blackberry-bushes, 
and  as  he  passed  under  the  shading  branches 
of  a  wild-cherry  tree,  a  most  terrifying  catas- 
trophe took  place — he  plunged  and  slid  into 
an  open  grave  containing  about  a  foot  of 
water.  Cuddy  heard  the  splash,  and  it  in- 
dicated to  him  the  Doctor's  utter  annihila- 
tion. He  gathered  the  reins  up  with  a  groan 
of  despair  and  prepared  to  drive  off  with 
speed,  lest  the  moonack  chase  and  overwhelm 
him  also,  when  he  heard  the  Doctor's  voice. 
The  instinct  of  obedience  was  strong  in  him 
— for  he  had  been  born  a  slave — and  he  de- 
layed a  moment  to  listen.  "  Come  here, 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  193 

Cuddy,"  shouted  the  Doctor,  ''I've  fallen 
into  the  grave  they've  dug  for  old  Tom  Haz- 
ard." Cuddy  groaned,  but  did  not  move, 
either  to  drive,  or  to  fly  to  the  Doctor's  res- 
cue. "  Come  here,  I  say,  and  help  me  out ; 
I  shall  die  of  the  rheumatism  if  I  stay  here." 
Another  groan,  but  still  no  motion  to  render 
assistance.  "  Cuddy,  if  you  don't  come, 
I'll  conjure  you  with  that  big  skeleton  in  my 
closet."  Still  no  answer,  and  at  last,  the 
Doctor,  by  dint  of  struggling  and  breaking 
away  the  earth,  managed  to  drag  himself  out 
of  the  shallow  grave.  Undaunted  by  a  mis- 
hap that  would  have  both  mentally  unnerved 
and  physically  exhausted  anyone  but  a 
country  doctor,  unchilled  in  spirit  though 
shivering  in  body,  the  determined  inves- 
tigator walked  up  to  the  ghost. 

He  took  one  glance  and  at  once  turned, 
and,  avoiding  the  open  grave,  ran  down  the 
steps  and  across  the  green.  "  Come  here, 
Cuddy;  if  I  die  of  rheumatism  I'll  take  you 
up  and  show  you  that  ghost.  I'll  conjure 
you  with  every  charm  in  the  witch-book  if 
you  don't  come."  Cuddy  was  weak  with 
terror,  and  the  Doctor  seized  him  by  the 
collar,  pulled  him  out  of  the  chaise  and  up 
the  steps.  With  chattering  teeth  and  closed 


194  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

eyes  he  stumbled  along  by  the  Doctor's  side, 
clutching  his  leader's  arm  and  muttering 
words  of  Voodoo  charms.  When  they 
reached  the  faintly  shining  ghost,  the  Doc- 
tor shouted,  "  Open  your  eyes,  Cuddy,"  and 
his  power  fairly  forced  Cuddy  to  comply. 
The  Doctor  raised  his  whip  and  brought  it 
down  on  the  shining  ghost ;  a  great  swarm 
of  fire-flies  rose  in  the  air,  leaving  disclosed 
a  juniper-tree,  which  had  chanced  to  grow 
somewhat  in  the  form  of  a  human  figure. 
This  strange  phenomenon  I  cannot  explain, 
but  it  is  not  the  only  time  that  a  juniper-tree 
on  a  misty  night  in  fall  has  attracted  a  swarm 
of  fire-flies  to  light  upon  it. 

Cuddy  nearly  fainted  in  revulsion  of  feel- 
ing. Both  returned  to  the  road  and  clam- 
bered into  the  chaise.  The  Doctor  was  now 
thoroughly  chilled.  He  took  from  the  medi- 
cine-chest that  he  always  carried  ("the  Doc- 
tor's bag  o'  tools,"  Cuddy  called  it)  a  flask 
that  may  have  contained  medicine,  but  which 
smelled  more  like  "kill-devil,"  and  bade 
Cuddy  drive  with  speed  to  Zeke  Gardiner's ; 
for  when  the  heat  of  the  chase  was  over,  the 
valiant  old  Doctor  began  to  feel  the  twinges 
of  an  enemy  that  he  dreaded  more  than  any 
ghost — his  rheumatism — and  he  dare  not 


CUDDYMONK'S  GHOST  195 

ride  home  dripping  with  icy  grave-water, 
even  if  he  were  full  of  Jamaica  rum. 

No  lights  were  seen  at  Zeke's,  but  a  vig- 
orous knocking  at  the  door  roused  the  entire 
amazed  and  sympathetic  family  ;  and  while 
one  blew  up  a  roaring  fire  in  the  chimney, 
another  heated  a  warming-pan,  another  took 
off  the  Doctor's  muddy  clothes,  and  Mistress 
Gardiner  concocted  a  terrible  mixture — a 
compound  tea  of  boneset,  snakeroot,  and 
chamomile,  which,  in  spite  of  the  Doctor's 
fierce  remonstrances  and  entreaties  for  a  mug 
of  flip  instead,  she  poured  down  his  throat, 
thus  cancelling  in  one  fell  dose  many  a  debt 
of  nauseous  bolus,  pill,  or  draught  that  she 
owed  to  him. 

The  perspiring  Doctor,  as  he  was  being 
smothered  in  the  great  feather-bed,  and 
singed  with  the  warming-pan,  and  filled  to 
the  teeth  with  scalding  herb-tea,  gave  his 
parting  order  to  Cuddy — to  drive  home  and 
tell  Mrs.  Greene  that  he  had  been  detained 
at  the  Gardiners'  all  night  "  on  account  of 
an  overdose  of  spirits,"  and  then  to  come 
for  him  in  the  morning.  Cuddy  listened 
respectfully  and  answered  obediently,  went 
quietly  around  behind  the  Gardiners'  house, 
calmly  placed  the  horse  in  the  Gardiners' 


196  IN  OLD  NARRAGANSETT 

stable  and  the  chaise  in  the  Gardiners'  barn, 
slept  the  sleep  of  the  brave,  the  obedient, 
the  unhaunted,  in  the  hay  in  the  upper  hay- 
mow, and  appeared,  as  ordered,  with  horse 
and  chaise  at  the  front  door  the  following 
morning. 


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